ACT Fibernet

ACT, Atria Convergence Technologies.

I'm not writing about ACT because it's my broadband service provider, or because of how much I love my WiFi, no.....but because I figured I had a deeper connect with it.

It's only recently that I discovered that ACT, which is India's largest non telco broadband service providers, is 'Atria Convergence Technologies', one of my pet project finance cases in IDBI.

                 

I had worked on this case when the company was founded, their very first loan, way back in 2000. In fact my colleague Prakash, and I had worked really hard on the proposal. It was days when fiber optics was a little known term and it needed us to stretch our research and thinking skills to understand the case in all its detail, and put up a convincing loan sanction proposal to our committee.

And yesterday when I called Prakash, we shared a proud moment. In fact even recalled that our committee had commended us on the depth of research done for the proposal. 

And as we spoke, a couple of anecdotes that came to recall. There was one Mr.Sudarshan, who was part of the founding team of ACT, with who we had a lot of our technical and financial discussions. One day over coffee, when I said I was from Hyderabad, he said he was from Hyderabad himself and had studied in Little Flower Boys College. And I was still saying my brother was also from Little Flower, when Prakash bursts out laughing, saying. "Little Flower? what kind of a gay name is that for a boys college". Well Well.

While this was what I recalled, what Prakash recalled was an experience when the two of us sat in on the committee meet.

The Chief General Manager, who heads the committee got a call in the middle of the meeting.(days before cell phones, so he had all of us listening in)  It was afternoon, and the guy at the other end said Good Morning, and the CGM responded 'Good Morning ...ehee.... Good Morning ...ehee ....cha...Good afternoon', and I apparently ran out of the room mouth covered, as I couldn't stop giggling. ( can't imagine what I found so funny about it then)

It's curious how both of us recalled instances of the other laughing uncontrollably. Both innocuous instances, but considering they were from seventeen years back they hold a whole different significance in just recall of detail.

While we can live in the here and the now, in the present, a smile from the past is always welcome.

Atria was one of our more interesting cases, and seen from today, guess one of our most successful too. I now love ACT a few notches more :)