NEW DELHI: NDTV Imagine may have brushed aside the existing players in the Hindi general entertainment space to grab the third spot with Ramayan as its content driver, but one reason for its success is that it sorted out the crucial distribution issue.

"We had hit almost 80 per cent of the base that Star Plus had right from the start, and have grown it since then. When you launch a Hindi GEC or any other channel in an already cluttered market, there is no way you can succeed without getting your distribution right, and our team managed to do just that. 50-60 per cent of the channnel‘s success could be attributed to solid distribution," says NDTV head of network distribution and affiliate sales Rahul Sood.

Unlike the other NDTV news channels, NDTV Imagine does not form part of the Set India-Discovery bouquet.

"It was a mammoth task, with 4,000-plus decoders to be seeded across the length and breadth of the country, to make an impact in a marketplace where existing incumbents have their shares," Sood recalls.

Elaborating further, Sood adds: "Four months prior to the launch, all the key markets were identified and the whole launch strategy put in place. The idea was to make sure that we get very high visibility in the early days of launch, so that people get a chance to get a feel for the channel."

Sood, however, was not willing to disclose the carriage amount that NDTV Imagine had to pay to the cable operators.

"So far as carriage fees are concerned, we had a pre-worked limit and we have been pretty well within those limits. The spends were decided by us five months ago and we stuck to the decisions," he says.

The next big focus is to launch the channel across the key international markets and there will be announcements on that front very soon," Sood adds.