How do you plan to scale to other cities? Franchises, distributors, technology support vendors?
Launch HN: Wifi Dabba (YC W17) – Low-Cost Wifi in India
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Re: Launch HN: Wifi Dabba (YC W17) – Low-Cost Wifi in India
#42How do you plan to scale to other cities? Franchises, distributors, technology support vendors?
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.
Re: Launch HN: Wifi Dabba (YC W17) – Low-Cost Wifi in India
#43How will people pay for the Wifi ?
The customer buys a token from the store with cash. They connect to the wifi and enter the token number to authenticate.
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) :)
Re: Launch HN: Wifi Dabba (YC W17) – Low-Cost Wifi in India
#44> 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!
Re: Launch HN: Wifi Dabba (YC W17) – Low-Cost Wifi in India
#45Great 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.
Re: Launch HN: Wifi Dabba (YC W17) – Low-Cost Wifi in India
#46congratulations to WifiDabba team. This is great progress for Aam Aadmi.
To the founders - Why did you decide to join YC?
Re: Launch HN: Wifi Dabba (YC W17) – Low-Cost Wifi in India
#47Great 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.
The range right now is about ~50ft. We're working on improving that dramatically, it's our top priority.
Re: Launch HN: Wifi Dabba (YC W17) – Low-Cost Wifi in India
#48What about people using it for torrenting specially 20GB for 20RS ?
He has clarified that it is 1GB for 20 Rupees.
Re: Launch HN: Wifi Dabba (YC W17) – Low-Cost Wifi in India
#49Love 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.
Re: Launch HN: Wifi Dabba (YC W17) – Low-Cost Wifi in India
#50I 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 :-)
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.
positive move ++