Distributed wireless venture Dabba has announced its Season 2 campaign to expand across India and tackle the connectivity challenges facing the country.
The initiative aims to deploy more than 100,000 Dabba Lite devices by the end of the year, building on the success of the initial launch earlier this year in which 1,000 devices quickly sold out.
India, a country of 1.43 billion people, currently has low broadband penetration, with only 30 million people having access to WiFi and less than half of the population enjoying any type of internet access. Dabba’s mission is to change this by providing fast and affordable internet to the people of India using a decentralized physical network (DePIN).
The venture is already reporting steady demand, with 90-100 TB of paid data consumed per month across the 1,000 devices sold. This high demand reflects the potential success of the project, which is backed by the Solana project and uses his Dabba tokens for transactions.
Dabba plans to expand its coverage by leveraging India’s vast network of local cable operators (LCOs) comprising over 150,000 operators. These LCOs typically do not have a large subscriber base, but with Dabba’s intervention, there is significant scope for growth.
“India represents the largest market for decentralized wireless and WiFi networks, and Dabba is strategically positioned to become a market leader in this space,” said Arul Murugan, Managing Partner at Borderless Capital. states.
The project invites hotspot owners to join the network by purchasing Dabba’s router hardware and choosing an LCO to deploy their devices. Participants can commit to installing hotspots in areas where there is demand for paid WiFi connectivity and earn Dabba token rewards based on data usage.
This initiative comes at a time when India’s data demands have doubled in the past five years and it has become clear that the current infrastructure is inadequate to meet this need. Dabba’s model promises to capitalize on the country’s growing interest in cryptocurrencies to provide more affordable broadband connectivity options. India ranked second after the United States in terms of virtual currency transactions from July 2022 to June 2023, at approximately $250 billion.
“Dabba’s strategic partnership with local cable operators (LCOs) marks a pivotal shift in India’s internet landscape and positions Dabba as a key player in India’s quest for universal internet access. ” commented Shayon Sengupta of Multicoin Capital.
Dabba has previously helped scale Google’s public WiFi and FSOC initiatives in India with support from prominent investors such as Multicoin Capital, Y Combinator, and Borderless Capital.
