mildlyclassic

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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...

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

I'm the cofounder of wifi dabba. It's fairly simple why people use our service and we're able to run profitably. 3G/4G is too damned expensive for the average Indian. It's fine for the middle class in our country, but for the vast majority of the population, mobile data eats into their daily expenses rather heavily.

We use the local isp and get a fibre line to the chai wallah. We help do the kyc, installation and whatever else is necessary.

Tokens are physical and work exactly the way you describe. Pay cash, get wifi.

Bingo :)

So this is something that surprised me as well, especially given we don't offer free plans or a trial.

When we spoke to our users they said the following: - Way faster than Jio (We offer 100mbps) - The price was so low that they didn't mind paying - They don't trust reliance and the ID process of getting a jio connection - It's so cheap and fits in their daily routine of getting chai, cigarette, etc.

A sort of AWS style platform for retail. Eg. Are you building a POS or Inventory app or do you want to sell your online goods offline? You can access our merchants and authenticated users that already have a prepaid wallet and are at a retail location predisposed to buying. And because of our connectivity, you don't have to worry if your users have internet.

Or maybe an IOT platform of sorts, for example, you're an FMCG and you want to know that your shipments really did arrive at the location your distributor was supposed to deliver it.

India's a challenging country where > 80% of our retail is fragmented into millions of micro-stores.

We believe in charging for a good service. We don't ever want to show ads or mess with your connection in any way. thanks !

It's a mesh built on low cost custom hardware. Each node is also super powerful with >128gb storage and some nice computation power, with a GPU to boot :) We're looking to be more than just an ISP in the long run.