Tuesday, April 12 2005 15:18 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Bangalore: Aiming at tapping the booming need by individual homes for watching satellite TV through Direct to Home (DTH) set top box in India, State-run Bharat Electronics Ltd today (Apr 12, 2005) said that it is planning to sell over five lakh DTH set-top boxes in the country this financial year (2005).

"We are targeting over five lakh set top boxes this year," BEL director marketing S C Khanna said in Bangalore, at the announcement of the annual results by the public sector electronics major.

"Even if we get 30 per cent to 40 per cent market share, we should be able to get revenues of Rs 200 crore (from set top box sales)," he said.

BEL has developed and manufactured in house the set top boxes to receive free to air channels and branded it as "BEST", with the product having a one-year warranty.

BEL chairman and managing director Y Gopala Rao said that the firm has set up a nation-wide dealer network for sales, while it has built designs for set top boxes for cable TV and terrestrial reception.

He said that BEL was looking at acquiring firms or set up joint ventures to enter the booming telecom equipment business in the country.

Rao said that the firm was in talks with Ghaziabad based PSU Central Electronics Ltd to buy out its phase array module division this year, but did not elaborate on the cost of the acquisition.