Jio Fiber has the billion-dollar financial muscle with Reliance Industries backing it while Airtel Xstream has the support of Bharti Enterprises. In comparison, ACT Fibernet is a tiny player, and it may look like a lost battle even before it’s fought. But then, as Malcolm Gladwell puts it in his book, titled David, and Goliath: Underdogs, Mists, and the Art of Battling Giants - “Giants are not what we think they are. The same qualities that appear to give them strength are often the sources of great weakness”. Bala Malladi, CEO of ACT Fibernet, a small player in terms of geographical spread in fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) broadband, is well aware of the limitations of his company and the intimidating size of its rivals. That realisation has been the biggest strength for ACT, which claims to be the fourth largest player in India’s wireline broadband market serving 1.8 million households, as it continues to protect its turf from the Goliaths. But how exactly is the Bengaluru-based company managing to do it? Counterintuitive choices: scale vs. quality Compared to Airtel, which covers 219 Indian cities (as of December 2020), ACT’s presence is negligible at 19. Though Jio Fiber hasn’t officially declared its current geographical presence, the company has an ambitious plan to cover more than 1,600 cities across India.

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