PIB TrackerWAVES OTT crosses one crore users
Prasar Bharati's public-service streaming platform passes 1 crore registered users in under two years — a state-run answer to the private OTT boom.
What happened
- On 2 June 2026, the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting announced that WAVES OTT — Prasar Bharati's digital streaming platform — has crossed 1 crore (10 million) registered users, with over 1.4 crore downloads.
- The milestone comes less than two years after launch (November 2024), making WAVES, in the government's words, India's fastest-growing public-service streaming platform.
- The platform now carries more than 24,000 content titles and over 15,000 hours of content across entertainment, news, education, culture, spirituality and public-service genres.
- It streams 140+ live TV channels and 200+ radio services, alongside live-event streaming, archival material and on-demand video.
- WAVES reaches audiences in more than 130 countries, in multiple Indian languages, and is available on mobile, web and connected-TV devices — all with free access.
- The stated next target: 2 crore registered users by March 2027, via more content partnerships, wider device distribution and deeper regional/educational offerings.
For Prelims
- What it is: WAVES OTT is the over-the-top (OTT) streaming service of Prasar Bharati, India's public-service broadcaster — a single app bundling television, radio, on-demand video, education, culture and heritage content. (Note: WAVES here stands for the OTT app; do not confuse it with the WAVES summit — see below.)
- Launch: unveiled on 20 November 2024 at the 55th International Film Festival of India (IFFI) in Panaji, Goa. Its positioning pitch was "clean, family-friendly" content distinct from commercial OTTs.
- Nodal body — Prasar Bharati: a statutory autonomous body established under the Prasar Bharati (Broadcasting Corporation of India) Act, 1990, which came into existence on 23 November 1997. It is India's public-service broadcaster and comprises the two erstwhile media units of the I&B Ministry — Doordarshan (DD) and All India Radio (Akashvani).
- Parent ministry: Ministry of Information & Broadcasting (I&B). Prasar Bharati is autonomous in law but functions within the broadcasting ecosystem of this ministry.
- Content stack on WAVES: DD & AIR archives; PM eVidya educational channels; digital editions of the government journals Yojana, Kurukshetra and Rozgar Samachar; devotional live streams from prominent temples; and live-event coverage.
- Scale figures (source-anchored): 1 crore registered users · 1.4 crore downloads · 24,000+ titles · 15,000+ hours · 140+ live TV channels · 200+ radio services · 130+ countries.
- The WAVES summit family (distinct entity): the World Audio Visual & Entertainment Summit (WAVES) is a separate global media-and-entertainment summit organised by the I&B Ministry; its first edition was held 1–4 May 2025 at the Jio World Convention Centre, Mumbai, with the tagline "Connecting Creators, Connecting Countries." Both share the WAVES brand and the same ministry, but the OTT app and the summit are different things.
- Where it sits in India's media stack: India's broadcasting/streaming space spans the private OTT players, the regulatory frame of the IT Rules 2021 (digital-media code), Doordarshan/AIR as legacy public broadcasters, and now WAVES as the public-service OTT layer.
The wider story — why a state-run OTT milestone matters. India's over-the-top market grew up almost entirely in the private sector — a crowded field of subscription apps competing on originals, sport and regional drama. Into that field the public broadcaster entered late, in November 2024, with a different proposition: not a paid premium catalogue but a free, advertising-light, public-interest bundle that puts Doordarshan and All India Radio's decades of archives, government educational channels and cultural programming behind a single modern app. Crossing 1 crore registered users in under two years is the headline the ministry is selling, but the more examinable point is structural: it shows the state attempting to occupy the digital distribution layer directly, rather than relying only on legacy cable-and-satellite reach for Doordarshan and FM/MW reach for AIR. As television viewership migrates to streaming and connected TVs, a public broadcaster that does not have its own digital storefront risks losing the audience that public-service broadcasting exists to serve. WAVES is the institutional response to that risk.
The public-service logic. The Prasar Bharati Act, 1990 obliges the corporation to conduct broadcasting "as a public service" — to inform, educate and entertain, and to safeguard citizens' right to be informed on matters of public concern. That mandate historically lived on linear television and radio. WAVES extends it into on-demand digital form: free educational content via PM eVidya, the digital editions of Yojana, Kurukshetra and Rozgar Samachar (long-running government magazines that aspirants themselves read), devotional and heritage streams, and archival DD/AIR material. The platform's reach into 130+ countries also gives it a soft-power dimension: it functions as a window onto Indian culture and languages for the diaspora and foreign audiences, complementing external-broadcasting efforts. So the milestone reads on three registers at once — a technology-adoption story, a public-broadcasting-reform story, and a cultural-diplomacy story.
The institutions behind the app. To place WAVES correctly, an aspirant should hold the public-broadcasting lineage in order. All India Radio (Akashvani) traces to 1936; Doordarshan began television transmission in 1959 and became a full national service through the following decades. Both ran as media units inside the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting until the Prasar Bharati Act, 1990 — passed to give the broadcaster editorial autonomy from the government of the day — was operationalised on 23 November 1997, transferring DD and AIR into the new statutory corporation. The corporation is steered by the Prasar Bharati Board; its broad mandate under the Act is to uphold the unity and integrity of the country, present a fair and balanced flow of information, and pay special attention to education, agriculture, rural development, science, sports, women and the welfare of weaker sections. WAVES is best read as the latest delivery channel for that same statutory mandate — the move from a tower-and-transponder model to an app-and-internet model.
The regulatory backdrop. India's digital-media and OTT space is governed largely through the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, which created a three-tier self-regulation and oversight structure for OTT/streaming content and brought digital news and curated content under the I&B Ministry's purview. WAVES operates within this broader environment but as a public-sector entrant, not a regulated private intermediary in the ordinary sense — its differentiator from launch has been the explicit "clean, family-friendly" content pitch, positioning the public platform against recurring controversies over content on commercial OTTs. For Mains, this lets the release sit inside a larger argument: the state pursuing the digital audience both as regulator (the 2021 Rules) and as direct provider (WAVES), two different levers on the same media transition.
What it is NOT. WAVES OTT is not a private commercial streaming service and is not a paid-subscription platform — its public-service content is offered free. It is not the same as the WAVES summit, despite the shared name and shared ministry; the summit is a global industry convening (first held 1–4 May 2025, Mumbai), while the OTT is a consumer app (launched Nov 2024). Prasar Bharati itself is not a department of the I&B Ministry — it is a statutory autonomous corporation created by Act of Parliament, even though Doordarshan and All India Radio were earlier ministry media units. The Prasar Bharati Act received presidential assent in 1990 but was not brought into force until 1997 — the two years are commonly confused. And the "1 crore" figure refers to registered users, distinct from the 1.4 crore downloads — a statement that conflates the two would be wrong.