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Pioneering the asset-light broadband network | Excitel

Akshay Datt

Jan 6, 2023

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic- you may have heard this famous phrase by the great sci-fi author Arthur C Clarke.

Imagine someone from the 1970s who time-travels to today. The fact that we have the internet everywhere will seem like magic to the person.

In this episode, I peek behind the curtains of this magic with Vivek Raina, founder of Excitel, one of the fastest-growing private internet service providers in India.

Excitel is the David facing Goliaths like Reliance Jio and Airtel in the battle for getting internet to our homes. Despite such large competitors, Excitel has continued to scale up rapidly. Catering to parts of urban India mostly overlooked by the big brands made Excitel the David facing the Goliaths.

The asset-light approach helped it to get to market faster and focus its attention on managing customer support, a crucial aspect of this trade.

Vivek talks about the nuts and bolts of bringing the internet to our homes, and how he found a niche in a competitive market and managed to thrive in a highly capital-efficient manner.

Other Ways to Listen:

Spotify | Apple Podcast | Amazon Music | Google Podcast

Some of the things he shared:-

Origin of the idea and figuring out the gap
Fair use policy
Uberization of broadband
Marketing strategy; hyper-local effort
Flywheel of growth
5G adoption at scale

Additional readings:-

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Mail me at ad@thepodium.in with your comments & feedback or if you just want to hear my comments on your startup idea - I love getting your emails!

Until the next founder's thesis📕,

Your host, AD