WiFi Dabba : WiFi is no more HiFi

India is the fastest growing country in the digital world but besides serving as a biggest smartphone user base, a significant portion of its population does not have an internet connection.

In a bid to bring access to low-cost internet connection most of the telecom operators in the country are initiating new schemes on their carriers. Also, there are big tech firms such as Facebook and Google who are working towards deploying broadband networks in India through Wi-Fi and public hotspots. However, their impact is slow.

Reliance changed the rules of the game by launching Jio; forcing the other telecom operators to either play by those rules or lose customers. 

Wifi Dabba, an affordable wireless Internet network that is now available in most parts of Bengaluru. It launched its services around the same time as Reliance Jio, and while the 4G network promised users data at just Rs. 50 per gigabyte, wifi Dabba offered 1 GB at just Rs. 20. wifi Dabba is a collection of Wi-Fi hotspots spread around the city. But, this 13- months old startup wants to change the entire game is played.

What makes Wifi Dabba interesting though, is that you can actually pay just Rs. 2 to get online - and use it all over the city. "To get more and more people online, the price point is very critical," says Shubhendu Sharma, co-founder and COO of Wifi Dabba. "It's something from a case study that was done in the 90s by FMCGs, about sachet pricing. What they found was that the 100ml bottles were not selling, so they made these small Re. 1 sachets. You give small sachets, and you get people on the system. And we're hoping that once people start using they'll take the bigger packs also, but this pricing isn't going away."

Working

Shubhendu Sharma started the company along with CEO Karan Lakshman, and the two began research and development for the idea in July 2016. by September 2016, they were ready to launch, and today they have over 1000 locations in Bengaluru.

The "Dabbas" are hotspots that are distributed to small shops, such as bakeries, tea shops, and so on. They're broadcasting a Wifi signal, and you can buy a token at any of the shops, Sharma explains. "You connect to the open SSID, and then punch in your phone number - this is a one time requirement - to establish your identity," he says. "Then you enter the eight digit code on the token and you're online."

"There is seamless connectivity in the background as long as your Wi-Fi is still on, just like you move from telecom tower A to tower B," Sharma continues. "And if your balance runs out, you can also buy a renewal online and extend."

The "secret sauce" of the company is its pricing, and that's made possible by the hardware that's being used for the dabbas, the routers that the company is distributing."We actually started off the whole thing by tinker with our Raspberry Pis," Sharma says with a laugh. "We never thought that so many people would be signing up for prepaid Wi-Fi when Jio was launching, but it turns out that there's a real need."

The Master Plan

The aim is to be the preferred choice for internet data and the founders are not mincing their words.

'We're a new kind of network. The high-speed kind of network. We are going to provide insanely cheap wifi across Bangalore city. The government's not going to do it, the big companies should not be allowed to do it. It's up to you and we to just do it,' reads a statement on the website.


Bangalore, Sharma informs, is only the start. The plan is to criss-cross the entire nation with its high grade fiber optics to ensure that the user gets reliable data connection.