[BIackSwan]

Interested, but few questions - There are several "traditional" financial instruments you can use to fund this rollout across Bangalore.

This includes but is not limited to - Bank Debt, Venture Debt, Equity, Revenue Share based Debt, indie.vc style debt (revenue share debt payback), ads on billboards below/above/next to the wifi towers and so on.

Why go the public retail investor/franchise model route? Are all of the above exhausted or infeasible? If so - why?

Further, the network doesn't require a city coverage for it to work. It can be added piecemeal over time. Thus, you don't need the entire city coverage to start with - but major population dense areas to make the $20k payback in a few months. And the profits there on can be reinvested into more PoPs. Starting capital is $1.3M - its not hard to raise with a working solid business - in debt format if you don't want to give up equity.

[mildlyclassic]

OP here. Thank you for your interest and questions.

There are a few reasons why we would like to get the public involved:

1. It's taken 20 years, 13 telecom companies and about $200B to bring mobile internet access to 600 million Indians. Broadband deployment is more expensive than mobile deployment so even napkin math gives you an idea of the magnitude of money and time it will require to truly make a dent in the connectivity of the country. If we can lower the cost of the deployment tech then we will able to lower the cost of ownership and distribution of the tech. This would be a win-win for consumers and investors.

2. A whole lot of the issues that plague the internet today, from the splintering of it into a chinese network, censorship, net neutrality and other issues comes from the fact that it's so expensive to deploy these networks that they fall into the domain of mega-corps or nation states. As a result, control of the internet falls into a few hands and we have an internet that is getting increasingly centralized. If Wifi Dabba can spread ownership of the network then we hope that it will lead to more open internet that is harder to control or shutdown.

3. You're right, we're aiming to raise only $2M from the public - 100 PoPs x $20k each. Not sure where the $13M comes from, if you could point out where you see that number, I'd be happy to rectify it.

4. We've also built a lot of safety elements into the purchase process. We're following Kickstarter-ish rules where you only have to make a $1000 deposit - the remainder to be paid only when we sell all 100 PoPs. Furthermore we offer a 100% refund in the first 12 months should you choose to change your mind at any point.

[BIackSwan]

Thanks for your reply.

1. The cost for a setup and maintenance is $2M for an entire Tier 1 city in India - that's peanuts compared to the revenue you will generate if the general public starts using the network and pays for it. You can self fund this to a large scale.

2. Wifi Dabba as an entity controls this infrastructure and that entity also controls the software that powers the infrastructure. The PoP is not an independent entity working in a decentralized matter. If the Indian govt says Wifi Dabba as an entity has to shut down - it can easily do so without any problems and the network goes down with it. So its hard to agree that this solution is truly decentralized.

3. There was some weird calculation error on $13.2M figure. I fixed it - sorry about that.

4. That I understand, but my question isn't about the legitimacy of the fundraise.

Apart from point #2 - my original question is not addressed.

Have you explored and ruled out traditional forms of financial instruments? If yes - why? If not - why not do that first for 1 or 2 cities and then the model can be flipped into public retail investment/franchise model at a later point once you prove a successful rollout on a city scale.

[mildlyclassic]

We have raised money from YC and other institutional investors and will continue to do so in the future. Our reason to enable public participation now is to bake it into a core part of our model while learning all the benefits and pitfalls of such a model as early as possible.

In the long run our hope is to lower the cost of the tech enough so that anyone can participate in the ownership and distribution of broadband at a reasonable price. This is the first small step in that direction.

[BIackSwan]

That makes sense. I wish you all the best and hope you succeed.