Launch HN: Wifi Dabba (YC W17) – Low-Cost Wifi in India

[mildlyclassic]

Wifi Dabba provides super cheap, super fast internet at tea-stalls and bakeries in Bangalore, India. We built Wifi Dabba because mobile data is still expensive and also because getting wifi at the local bakery is just downright cool. We focussed on chai wallahs and bakeries because they're everywhere and practically everyone in India gets chai at least once a day from these stalls. We have 3 plans, Rs.2 for 100mb, Rs.10 for 500mb & Rs.20 for 20GB (edit: whoops, that should say 1GB. Someday we'll hit that low of a rate!). We don't have any free trials or ads because we think the Rs.2 price point is something that everyone can afford. We've got 100 locations so far, if you're reading this from Bangalore, check out our coverage map on http://www.wifidabba.com to try us out at a bakery near you. Our grand plan is to have Bangalore totally covered by the end of this year.

I'm Karam and my co-founder is Shubhendu, Wifi Dabba is actually the result of 6 painful years of building 32 different apps and watching them fail before we found something that had product/market fit. I've lurked on HN for years now and its a mini-daydream come true to be part of YC. We're both happy to answer any questions about Wifi Dabba or even just to commiserate with you on just how hard building products is.

[colmvp]

> I'm Karam and my co-founder is Shubhendu, Wifi Dabba is actually the result of 6 painful years of building 32 different apps and watching them fail before we found something that had product/market fit. I've lurked on HN for years now and its a mini-daydream come true to be part of YC. We're both happy to answer any questions about Wifi Dabba or even just to commiserate with you on just how hard building products is.

I just want to say congrats on persevering, getting in, finding a fantastic idea, and good luck on growing!

[pj_mukh]

My God, this is such a good idea and I have so many questions.

a) I'm guessing you are expecting people to use this WiFi on their smartphones? Are your prices coming under the usual Indian telecom data prices?

b) If Facebook comes to you tomorrow and tells you they'll help cut your margins by 75% if you favour their traffic. Would you do it? You'd be able to pass on the price drop to other Indians.

[mildlyclassic]

A. We're entirely focussed on the 10 minutes when you're standing at the tea stall drinking your tea and flipping through your phone. Our prices are 5x cheaper than mobile data.

B. Favour their traffic? No way.

[blhack]

Seriously 20 rupees for 20GB?!?

For context, that is about $0.30.

In any case, this is awesome. Any plans to expand to other cities soon?

An unrelated question (that I think you might have a good answer to): When I've been to India, I've noticed that there is a lot of free WiFi around (in Mumbai, at least), but ALL of it requires that you have an Indian phone number that you have to register in order to get access.

Why is this? The cynic in me assumes that this so that network traffic can be tied to a real human being (since your phone number is tied to your person).

I guess a followup question: were there any interesting regulatory hurdles you had to jump through for this? Also what does the backhaul look like? Are you reselling 4G data? Building your own wireless backhaul maybe?

Cool project!

[mildlyclassic]

The phone number requirement is a government thing, it's not really from the provider's perspective. The good news is that the government is rethinking this and TRAI has recently recommended stopping it.

Our backhaul is 100mbps fibre lines.

[msound]

Congratulations Karam and Shubhendu!

Two questions:

1. Does this mean you are an ISP? If so, how did you go about registering as an ISP.

2. Most other WiFi (ex: at Cafe Coffee Day) requires one to register via SMS and pay by credit card. So the mobile number and Credit Card number becomes the primary key for our Government's Big Brother program to track the person. Have you side-stepped that by selling tokens that one can purchase anonymously using cash?

[mildlyclassic]

1. We are an ISP, we've applied for the license from the Department of Telecom

2. The Telecom Regulatory of Authority of India has just recommended stopping the use of OTP. We really like that.

[anilgulecha]

Karam and Shubhendu, congratulations. I knew about wifi-dabba a couple weeks ago from a stray comment on HN, and some co-workers and I were universally impressed.

I head the tech-committee for a local housing-welfare association in Bangalore, with a well maintained central park which sees a lot of foot traffic.

If you guys are interested we could pilot your dabba at the park (the tokens can be sold at the attached HOPCOMS). My email is in my profile if you'd like to get in touch.

Congrats on the launch again. Cheers.

[mildlyclassic]

Outstanding. We'll be in touch very soon. Hopcoms ftw!

[urs2102]

Hey Karam!

First off, congrats! It's great to see you out here posting, and although I've yet to launch anything on HN yet - I'm sure there are parts that are nerve wracking. Regardless, it's a big deal to have something out that people are using, so again - congrats!

I just wanted to ask a couple questions about where Wifi Dabba stands when looking at something like Reliance's Jio? What exactly are the differences?

Secondly - I just wanted to know how you got your product out in the hands of users in Bangalore? My family currently lives in Gurgaon , but I've grown up outside India and whenever I look at startups in India I am amazed how they are able to organize themselves amidst the chaos that is India :P. Especially when looking at chai wallahs, is it just a manual process of going person by person, or could you share how you've grown?

[mildlyclassic]

Reliance seems to be heavily focussed on their mobile network. They're talking a lot about their planned hotspots but there seems to be more smoke than fire at the moment. Once they launch, we'll see whats what. Our users seem to be wary of switching their phone numbers to Reliance and at the moment a lot of their phones don't support 4G as yet. Also, our service is 5x cheaper than mobile data, so users like that.

Rolling out Wifi Dabba has been a 'feet on the street' exercise, there's no shortcut to this. On the other hand we now have a waiting list of a few thousand stores, word gets around fairly quick because Dabba is good for business. It generates additional revenue, brings in new customers and store owners just think its cool.

[shas3]

Great stuff!

What's the Wifi range of each of these "Dabbas"? Little tuck shops, bakeries, and tea stalls in India don't always have places to sit or hangout. Would people be able to sit a little distance away at a bus stop or something be able to use Wifi? Would also be cool if you could expand into small restaurants.

[mildlyclassic]

The range right now is about ~50ft. We're working on improving that dramatically, it's our top priority.

[aq3cn]

You know Indian govt is busy building such infrastructure at Railways and villages with the collaboration with Google. Around 150 railway stations are equipped with free wifi. Govt is pushing optical fiber network in villages so that it can promote Digital India.

In my opinion you should contact govt for more help and I am sure your ideas can be utilized.

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/transportation/...

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/pune/Amazon-sets-up-...

[jasdeepsingh]

I had the exact same idea about 2 years ago, but never got a chance to follow through on it because I immigrated to Toronto. Definitely a novel and much needed problem that requires solving, and makes me super happy that it's being executed on! Well done guys!

Do look into Microtik hardware, hopefully these boxes can solve a ton of your problems: https://routerboard.com/ I know back when I was envisioning this, Microtik and RouterOS was on top of my list.

[mildlyclassic]

Thanks so much for the link, will look into it fo sho.

[woah]

Lots of these kind of "coffee shop wifi" things have not really been very successful in the US. Is India just a fundamentally different market, or do you guys have a different approach?

[mildlyclassic]

Our unit economics are good. The average unit breaks even in a couple of months. This is a lot like AirBnB, there's a market here that nobody is paying attention to. All the big companies are talking about it, but very few are doing it.

[anilgulecha]

A typical usecase many times is for the local rickshaw-wallah to goto an internet cafe, hand over 50rs, and ask for his phone to be loaded with the latest bollywood songs (don't know or care about internet.. it's all about content or apps).

50$ android phones have taken by storm, and now they are free to use a 2rs token to connect and download the songs themselves.

[redindian75]

Love the name. If the main usecase is for ~10min of chai sipping time, then easy/hard is the onboarding? ie., agreeing to terms & conditions, login, payment etc. Will this require them to download a new app or will it just appear as WiFi network with a loginportal?

It would seem if the time frame was longer (say a train journey or cab stuck in traffic) the process might be worth it.

Did u guys explore movie theaters, local trains, cabs, city to city buses etc where time spent might be more, so users might be willing to buy more.

[mildlyclassic]

You're right, its a simple login portal, no app, no fuss.

[sremani]

The dabba reminds me of Old STD, ISD, PCO dabba. Good concept. My guess is secondary and tertiary cities benefit more than metros like B'lore. Why 24hr validity on tokens ?

[mildlyclassic]

We're starting in Bangalore only because we know the city well. We're most definitely going to roll out in tertiary cities as soon.

[fgpwd]

Are you guys incorporated in India , or the US, or both? Asking this because the yc requirements page suggests that every company would have to incorporate in the US.

[codelust]

Karam/Shubhendu,

Really kicked to see something from my neck of the woods with great potential out in the market. Congratulations on the launch.

I'm assuming it will take​ significant volume to make this profitable (should be easily doable).

I had noticed recently fibre now being strung from trees in Bangalore much like how ethernet cable used to be ten-years-ago and figured we're on to something big now.

[charsi]

Cool idea no doubt. But wouldn't the need for such a thing go down as 4g/3g becomes more pervasive in the cities? I see this being more useful in places where residential and mobile internet are still not the norm. i.e. villages where people use the dabba as a communal well. Also what kind of access points/ router are you using inside the dabba?

[vmarsy]

That looks really cool, it's like the Starbucks/McDonalds wifi points, but for every shop for a really cheap price.

I'm curious about a few things:

How fast is super fast ?

How does it work? Is there a 4G hotspot hidden in the yellow box? or do you require your bakeries partners to install some specific router at their location (i.e. the bakeries must have a pre-existing internet connection setup) ?

[mildlyclassic]

It's super fast because we draw a 100mbps line to each store. We install our own routers. It's totally free for the store owner, we charge nothing up front. We split revenue with the store owner 80-20.

[bangda]

I don't understand one point. Bakeries and petty shops are not the places where people sit or spend more than a few minutes. Even if you were to,you are busy grabbing a coffee or a cigarette. Even though the number of people is very high, I dont see myself going to a petty shop ,buying a token and using the internet.Would love to know your counter.

[buvi]

The website says the token is valid for 24 hours, if the user is going to have 2-3 coffee/cigarette a day he doesn't have to get a token every time. Also If this token is valid across all the Bakeries and petty shops then the user can go to any shop for a chai and use the internet. Soon people might give you a token as change ;-)

[sandGorgon]

Congrats Karam! Good to see your public launch. I wonder if you thought of building your dabba on top of an Android phone. The Android Things platform combined with COSU mode in Android 6+ would make this kind of hardware very developer friendly...with remote management and updates built in for free !

It's something I have been wondering about lately. YMMV.

[mildlyclassic]

That's actually the first thing we tried, but then discovered pretty quickly that the unit economics don't work if you use a phone. Android is great way to prototype the idea, but sadly that's as far as you can go.

[anjanb]

Hi There,

   Congrats!! I'm from Bangalore and the idea impresses me. Pls. add this to all the bus stops' chai dabbas. People waste a lot of their mobile data in bus stops and in buses. If you can get corporate's buses to pay for decent wifi, you will get 1000 buses in Bangalore for sure.

  Good luck!

[sreeni_ananth]

This is awesome, great way to support the segment who can't afford a regular plan or who doesn't need one. I've heard from many auto rickshaw wallas that they don't make enough from cab services like Ola. Any thoughts of leveraging your network to provide value added services for them?