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.
The range right now is about ~50ft. We're working on improving that dramatically, it's our top priority.
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
#52Re: Launch HN: Wifi Dabba (YC W17) – Low-Cost Wifi in India
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
Where are you getting fast Ethernet pipes to stores there?? Having been there I find it hard to believe that infrastructure is there.
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.
Re: Launch HN: Wifi Dabba (YC W17) – Low-Cost Wifi in India
#54It's something I have been wondering about lately. YMMV.
Re: Launch HN: Wifi Dabba (YC W17) – Low-Cost Wifi in India
#55Congrats 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.
Re: Launch HN: Wifi Dabba (YC W17) – Low-Cost Wifi in India
#56Re: Launch HN: Wifi Dabba (YC W17) – Low-Cost Wifi in India
#57Seriously 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. W…
Re: Launch HN: Wifi Dabba (YC W17) – Low-Cost Wifi in India
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
Custom. We've also got some nice processing power & storage in our Dabbas for future plans.
Can you share any details of what the hardware is?
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.
Re: Launch HN: Wifi Dabba (YC W17) – Low-Cost Wifi in India
#59Really 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.
Re: Launch HN: Wifi Dabba (YC W17) – Low-Cost Wifi in India
#60Do 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.