ACT: Luring Broadband Aspirations of India through Lightening Fast Speed Date:   Tuesday , December 15, 2015 The sheer lack of congruous infrastructure, instability, poor governance, and local ruffianism have played a major role in inhibiting Indians to mere 1/8th of the speed that the rest of the world enjoys. Yet, with increasing cognizance, better infrastructure and fast-catching market, India is observing a turnaround of events. Through technology upgrade from Copper & Coaxial to FTTH (Fiber-to-the-Home), High Speed internet connectivity is not a myth anymore to over 352 million people accessing conventionally. Yet, without limiting itself to just profiteering, ACT, with acquisition of Beam Fiber, came to existence in 2008 amid a vision of convivial transmutation through in-home entertainment, education, and interactive services. To execute this vision, ACT on-boarded Bala Malladi (CEO), a visionary with decades of experience in consumer relation to steer this company to introduce India to the first ever 10 Mbps plan at just Rs.999/- way back in 2009 when 256-512 kbps bandwidth was still the threshold speed .With Bala\'s presage about India\'s changing trend through development in IoT, Smart City, Smart Education, e-Governance, and Smart Healthcare, ACT\'s Fibernet technology buckled up to provide up to 2-2.5 GBPS speed to each of its subscribers. Clouting High Speed Broadband Atria Convergence Technologies (ACT) commenced a humble journey with Cable distribution in 2000. After funding from India Value Fund Advisors, it was rebranded as ACT and by acquiring Beam Cable Systems, it voyaged with a vision to provide incredible speed through improvising the technology platform. ACT\'s future-proof technology and Bala\'s apparition transformed this company from just a cable distributor to multi-spectrum operations. In just seven years, he has steered the organization to $155 million revenue and 800,000 customers from just Rs.15 crores and Beam\'s nearly 25,000 customers, servicing only seven South Indian cities respectively. While retail consumers in Bangalore, Hyderabad and Chennai receive a speed of 100Mbps, Vijayawada, Nellore, Eluru, and Vishakhapatnam receive a top speed of 80Mbps. Albeit most of the ISPs claim to provide the advertised bandwidth speed, in most of the cases, they\'re unable to provide the exact speed which stimulates grievances amongst customers. Addressing the situation, ACT has inhibited itself to a categorical customer base to provide the exact advertised speed. Amidst constant power issues in most Indian cities, people get perturbed if there is no internet connectivity. Addressing the issue ACT has taken a step forward to provide up to four hours of uninterrupted internet connectivity even if there is no electricity. While coping up with the ecumenical bandwidth, this customer-centric company also offers Digital, Analog and IPTV services in Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh. Along with sufficing retail customer needs, ACT also offers Enterprise leased line connectivity and corporate broadband plans with a top speed of 250Mbps and FUP up to 1TB. The ACT Way Under Bala\'s gleaming guidance, the leadership team of 60 people (immediate & extended) leads the entire manpower of over 5,500 people that consists of professionals from various acclaimed blue-chip companies. With an extensive training schedule of 25,000 hours in a calendar year, this organization takes care of the employee\'s cognizance growth and additionally takes punctilious efforts towards employee health &safety through initiatives like ACT Cares and ACT Raksha. ACT\'s internal CSR initiatives - ACT Prakruti and ACT Play additionally engage the workforce in convivial activities. This employee-organization bond, employees\' inclination, and jubilance have been instrumental in the company\'s growth. \"You cannot be nice to everyone if you\'re not blissful. Our team attends to customers ranging from a slum dweller to a top-notch personnel; if they are not jubilant at their work, the company won\'t be as prosperous as it is today,\" comments Bala. ACT was surveyed by Great Place to Work and close to 90 percent of the employees voted ACT as the best company to work for in India. With a 60 percent CAGR, ACT is leading the broadband aspirations of the Silicon Valley of India and this prosperity will see the company venture into other Tier-I and Tier-II cities in the near future divvying three percent of its annual revenue in R&D. \"We keep scanning more incipient areas. We believe integrating 3-4 cities a year is a good number, however we opiate to go slow but steady. If 98 percent of the customers are jubilant, only then would we feel that we are prosperous, and in order to do that we are perpetually developing our infrastructure and resources,\" says Bala. Panel Key Management Sunder Raju, Managing Director Possessing top-level management roles in various companies, Sunder brings in wide experience and expertise in management. A computer science graduate, Sunder was one of the key players in introducing first 32-bit architecture in UNIX OS. With his technical expertise, he is now heading ACT. Bala Malladi, CEO Bala, a management veteran with 17 years of experience, is heading the strategic business plans of ACT. He has led the company from scratch to Rs.1000 crores revenue bagging over 5000 employees in just seven years. His vision of \'the ACT Way\' value system has flourished the company to venture in a multiple spectrum. Offices: Bangalore (Headquarter), Nellore, Vijayawada, Eluru, Chennai, Vishakhapatnam and Coimbatore Customers: Retail - 800,000 Enterprise: Google, Apollo Hospitals, and Taj Vivanta amongst others Services: Fibernet, Digital TV, IPTV, Analog TV, ACT Enterprise