The Walt Disney Co. has reportedly struck a deal to sell its 29.8% stake in leading Indian DTH operator Tata Play to the Tata Group at a roughly $1 billion valuation.
Tata Group has taken full control of the TV platform after buying the 29.8% stake from Disney, Bloomberg quotes people familiar with the developments as having said.
The deal comes as India’s media landscape is going through a major shake-up. Disney recently signed a binding agreement in late February to combine its India unit with Viacom 18 Media Pvt, creating an $8.5bn entertainment giant that will have 750 million viewers and dominate the sector in the world’s populous country.
Tata Play was incorporated in 2001 as a joint venture between Tata Group and (then) Twenty-First Century Fox. The company provides pay television via set-top boxes and over-the-top video streaming through its app and has a pan-India footprint of 23 million connections, according to the Tata Sons’s website. Tata Play in 2022 filed confidentially for a domestic initial public offering but the listing has yet to happen.
Tata Group raised its stake in Tata Play to slightly over 70% after buying out Temasek Holding Pte’s stake earlier this year. Temasek first invested in Tata Sky, as it was known at the time, in 2007.
