David vs Goliath scenarios in real life have rarely panned out as per the lore: more often than not, the Goliaths have won, by the sheer might of their size, and hence their power. The analogy applies to the corporate world as well; Goliath being the large incumbent with multiple customers and huge revenues, and David the often-hapless startup.

WiChorus, the David in this case, in the mobile network space, however, was determined to push its way through the mélange of incumbents and emerge victorious.

For starters, WiChorus is a provider of scalable core platforms for 4G networks, and hence is a direct competitor to behemoths like Motorola, Alcatel-Lucent, Huawei, and Nokia.

The company’s President and CEO, Rehan Jalil, says that despite the yawning gap between the stature of his company and that of its competitors, WiChorus can and will come up trumps. So what fuels his confidence?
Founded in 2005, WiChorus has weathered the initial storm - it was built at half the average cost of building up a company in the networking space, but more on that later. Today, its SmartCore platforms enable operators deploy WiMAX and LTE networks with advanced service and subscriber management, content management, and network optimization. “WiChorus, with its purpose-built SmartCore platform, is the first vendor formed to specifically meet the needs of 4G networks and the operators launching them,” says Peter Jarich, Research Director, Current Analysis. They also enable operators to monetize the Internet for increased ARPU and profitability.

What have fuelled the company’s rise, essentially, are one belief, and two facts. Rehan believes that in the corporate world, in any space, there is always an opportunity for a startup. The trick is to find a niche; if and when a new player does that, it can beat the incumbents ‘even in frontal assaults’.