
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&#x27;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 &amp; Rs.20 for 20GB (edit: whoops, that should say 1GB. Someday we&#x27;ll hit that low of a rate!). We don&#x27;t have any free trials or ads because we think the Rs.2 price point is something that everyone can afford.
We&#x27;ve got 100 locations so far, if you&#x27;re reading this from Bangalore, check out our coverage map on <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wifidabba.com" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wifidabba.com</a> to try us out at a bakery near you.
Our grand plan is to have Bangalore totally covered by the end of this year.<p>I&#x27;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&#x2F;market fit. I&#x27;ve lurked on HN for years now and its a mini-daydream come true to be part of YC. We&#x27;re both happy to answer any questions about Wifi Dabba or even just to commiserate with you on just how hard building products is.
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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!

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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.

~~~
mkagenius
Shouldn't we be encouraging few minutes of peace instead? Like, we will take
away your phones for next 10 minutes for Rs. 2

~~~
mildlyclassic
:) We're planning to offer charging services too. Plug in your phone and sit
in peace while it charges.

~~~
masade
That would rock! Smart phones are not "smart" with batteries.. there were
number of times i visited bangalore and my mob was out of charge :)

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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.

~~~
blhack
Really cool. Are you guys running custom hardware in the yellow boxes or is it
something off the shelf?

~~~
mildlyclassic
Custom. We've also got some nice processing power & storage in our Dabbas for
future plans.

~~~
blhack
Can you share any details of what the hardware is?

~~~
ziikutv
I am willing to bet it is something very trivial like Raspberry PIs connected
to dongles.

If you look at the map a lot of the locations are very concentrated; this is
likely because there are shit tonne of "Chai Wallah" places in India :).
However, looking at the outliers, I am not expecting a device that is creating
something similar to a net nor a wifi extender.

It would be way cheaper than having some other sort of a receiver.

------
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.

~~~
mkagenius
> The Telecom Regulatory of Authority of India has just recommended stopping
> the use of OTP

Was there any article regarding this?

~~~
mildlyclassic
I've linked to the paper below, the money quote is "Authentication through OTP
should be done away with"

[http://trai.gov.in/sites/default/files/Press_Release_18_0903...](http://trai.gov.in/sites/default/files/Press_Release_18_09032017.pdf)

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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!

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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.

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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.

~~~
petra
Any estimate on what your future range would look like ?

~~~
mildlyclassic
We're hoping the next version should hit about 100ft, we're aiming to improve
in small steps and often.

~~~
petra
i remember reading about NYCLink , they achieve a great range , maybe 400ft.

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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://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/transportation/railways/free-
wi-fi-service-now-available-at-100-railway-stations-across-india-400-stations-
to-be-covered-next-year/articleshow/56197708.cms)

[http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/pune/Amazon-sets-
up-...](http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/pune/Amazon-sets-up-free-WiFi-
zones-in-Pune/articleshow/48187178.cms)

------
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/](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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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?

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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.

~~~
X86BSD
Where are you getting fast Ethernet pipes to stores there?? Having been there
I find it hard to believe that infrastructure is there.

~~~
mildlyclassic
You'd be amazed at the amount of fibre that's already been laid. We work with
5 different ISP's to get the best connection possible.

~~~
X86BSD
Well I am very impressed. I had no idea fiber was literally everywhere down
there. Kudos to you man for making it work! My wife is from the NCR region of
Delhi, I hope you take over bangalore and then Delhi and make a fortune! :)

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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 ;-)

~~~
rgun
I hope Token as change thing takes off

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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.

~~~
sandGorgon
Really ? I was looking at 40$ phones at retail. Night be even cheaper in bulk.

But you're the expert obviously.

------
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?

------
ziikutv
Can you talk a little bit about how you power the Dabbas and refresh the
tokens if they are only valid for 24 days.

Do you guys function like "doodh wallahs" in that you visit the locations
every morning to reset power and tokens? Would seem like a hassle but
convenient from the point of view of the chai wallahs.

~~~
mildlyclassic
The dabbas are plugged into the wall for power, practically all tea shops tend
to have a power line of some sort even if its not obvious at first glance. We
provide a battery backup too. Our software handles refreshing of tokens, so no
need to visit the store that often for maintainence.

~~~
ziikutv
The tokens seem to be physical. Does that mean you print them on the spot?

Edit: Addendum: Also, if they are physical, why did you consider physical over
simply displaying them on a tiny screen? I can think of one reason, I can buy
a token and activate it later at home.

Danm.. I remember going to Chai-wallahs and reactivating my dongle. Cost me a
lot of money for very little bandwidth usage.

------
tapsboy
How do you plan to scale to other cities? Franchises, distributors, technology
support vendors?

~~~
mildlyclassic
We're getting at least one inquiry a day with regard to franchising, it's
something we're looking into, but QoS would be a challenge...maybe. We're
trying to figure out something that's one step above a franchisee model, I'm
sure there's something there, but I can't quite put my finger on it.

------
impish19
Can you give us a (as long as possible) tldr version of how you went from Idea
to execution? Did you have relevant background around ISPs and or telecom? How
did you investigate which ISPs you could partner with and how did you partner
with them?

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the_common_man
I really like this. I am wondering why you chose not to target the Coffee
days, Barista instead? Last I checked, none of them had wifi. At the same
time, maybe it's because they are not very friendly if you sit and work there
:-)

~~~
mildlyclassic
We've chosen to go the streets because thats where most of India lives. The
middle class of the country is well catered to by technology companies, the
poorer among us aren't.

The average Indian doesn't have access to wifi at home or at work and data is
too expensive for them. There's literally no place they can go to get cheap
internet access.

We want to fill that need.

~~~
the_common_man
You are most likely correct. Middle class can probably afford 3G. This is a
really good niche. If you manage to make it work, it would be awesome!

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nischalsamji
Why does the refunds page
([http://www.wifidabba.com/RefundPolicy.html](http://www.wifidabba.com/RefundPolicy.html))
look out of place? Are you offering any other services?

~~~
mildlyclassic
Yikes, thanks for point that out, we'll fix it.

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navalsaini
I would like to see Wifi Dabba as a platform where I can build apps for the
community without running them centrally (high bandwidth ones - involve video,
or local gaming, etc). Is that a part of your vision?

~~~
shubhendusharma
Simple answer. Yes.

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aman-pro
Hey Karam and Shubhendu, congratulations for the launch. I have a few
questions:

1\. What is the setup cost? 2\. What are your expansion plans, specially in
remote areas of India? Will the model still be profitable?

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rishabhd
Good going. : ] Any plans for expansion to other cities or is it a trial run
at Bangalore? Also, since you are an ISP, how do you keep costs down on
network equipment & fibre laying.

~~~
mildlyclassic
We're definitely going to expand to multiple cities as soon as we can. We've
partnered with a whole range of providers to lower the cost of physically
connecting each location.

------
prkvs
Does these Dabbas require maintenance? How do you plan to handle that? What if
some dabba is down for some reason unknown the chaishop walla? How are you
handling these repair requests?

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meetsinghal2
How much do you make off those 2 rupees? Even with a 30% margin it's just Rs
0.6. Is that big enough even at scale (given your installation, servicing,
acquisition costs)?

------
shanbhag
This is so cool! Never knew about this being a resident of Bangalore; I'm so
happy you got into YC! Congrats on the launch :) Would love to connect!

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navalsaini
Also this was a part of Aam Aadmi Party manifesto - to launch city wide Wifi.
Is this something which can come up in Delhi?

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jeshwanth
Cool idea, I think you can also install it in cabs and public transport.
People spend more time in traveling in Bengaluru.

All the best.

~~~
mildlyclassic
Hahaha :) You're right, the traffic has now hit levels of insanity.

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bankim
How does a customer pay and use the service? Pay the panwallah and he gives
customer a code which is used to bill?

~~~
mildlyclassic
The customer pays cash and gets a paper token with a token number on it. They
connect to the wifi and enter the token number to authenticate.

------
mkagenius
How can you fundamentally with first principal approach provide a lower rate
than say Airtel?

~~~
mildlyclassic
With enough scale, we can connect directly to the fibre cables entering India
from the sea.

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spotlmnop
Awesome! All the best guys.

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hschauhan
What about people using it for torrenting specially 20GB for 20RS ?

~~~
msound
He has clarified that it is 1GB for 20 Rupees.

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suprgeek
Is Rs.20 for 20GB a Typo? If not then I am stunned at those rates.

~~~
mildlyclassic
Thanks for spotting that... it should read Rs.20 for 1GB. Someday we'll hit
that low of a rate :)

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aangjie
Awesome.. Idea.. will try out next time I come into Domlur..

------
hrshtr
congratulations to WifiDabba team. This is great progress for Aam Aadmi. To
the founders - Why did you decide to join YC?

------
vs4vijay
Are you guys planning to launch in Delhi NCR?

~~~
mildlyclassic
We've gotten a really strong level of interest in the NCR, we're looking into
it for sure.

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ram_rar
How will people pay for the Wifi ?

~~~
mildlyclassic
The customer buys a token from the store with cash. They connect to the wifi
and enter the token number to authenticate.

~~~
zaatar
What a great idea, congrats on executing! Some quick Qs;

1) What kind of security exists on the wireless network?

2) Your privacy policy keeps talking about credit cards and Razorpay (a
payment processor) yet in this thread you are saying one can hop onto the
network using a cash-purchased token. Where exactly do Credit Cards fit in the
workflow?

3) Please consider switching your website over to SSL, Lets Encrypt certs are
free, other certs are cheap (GoDaddy charges only like $30/year or so) :)

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amitmerchant
Nice concept!

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asitdhal
an awesome idea !!

