VMPL
Bengaluru (Karnataka) [India], December 17: As India’s digital adoption accelerates–fuelled by UPI payments, online learning, telehealth, and a growing digital economy–the need for robust, reliable, and inclusive internet access has become critical. Stepping up to this national priority is Dabba Network, a community-powered broadband marketplace that has emerged as one of the most successful implementers of the Indian Government’s PM-WANI initiative, demonstrating scalable success. By combining decentralised, community-led deployment with a sustainable financial model, Dabba Network is turning the vision of universal, affordable internet into measurable reality on the ground, helping India get closer to the long-term vision of bringing over a billion people online.
Over the past year, Dabba Network has demonstrated rapid on-ground execution across underserved and high-demand regions, deploying 73,128 public Wi-Fi hotspots through local entrepreneurs and community partners. Its network now serves 243,609 daily users for payments, work, education, and entertainment, with 47,540 TB of bandwidth consumed, 426,900 active home passes, and 48,650 new connection requests. An engaged ecosystem of local providers has facilitated the sale of 23,601 hotspots, highlighting both commercial viability and strong community adoption.
Launched in 2020, PM-WANI (Prime Minister’s Wi-Fi Access Network Interface) established open, interoperable digital rails designed to accelerate public Wi-Fi deployment and empower local entrepreneurs, small ISPs, hotspot providers, and community networks. While PM-WANI created the national blueprint, Dabba Network has spent the past eight years translating this architecture into a working, scalable model –particularly in areas where conventional telecom economics have historically kept last-mile broadband unviable.
Working closely with local cable operators (LCOs), hotspot owners, bandwidth suppliers, hardware manufacturers, and location partners, Dabba Network has enabled large-scale deployment of PM-WANI-compliant Wi-Fi infrastructure across underserved neighbourhoods. It has connected communities that remain excluded from traditional broadband due to high infrastructure costs, limited fibre penetration, and the challenges of legacy models.
Karam Lakshman, CEO and Founder of Dabba Network, said, “India’s connectivity challenge is also its greatest opportunity. The demand for broadband is universal, but traditional deployment models don’t economically fit the last mile. PM-WANI flips that script by empowering local entrepreneurs and community partners to build internet access where it’s needed most. We are seeing the rise of a new, open broadband layer–one built for scale, affordability, and true inclusion. PM-WANI gave India a framework to unlock last-mile connectivity through community-led models, and our mission at Dabba Network is to push this vision forward by building an internet network that is inclusive, decentralised, and truly accessible to every Indian.”
The company’s traction reflects India’s massive last-mile gap. Despite having over 800 million mobile broadband users, the country has only ~40 million fixed broadband connections, and penetration in low-income communities drops to as low as one connection per 100 people. Dabba Network’s model fills this gap through community-run hotspots, sachet-sized data packs starting at ₹1, and highly localised distribution.
Central to this progress is Dabba Network’s decentralised DePIN marketplace, which uses blockchain transparency and Web2 simplicity to align incentives across all stakeholders. Its DBT token model rewards uptime, quality of service, and expansion, creating an open and economically aligned system that empowers communities to maintain and grow their own networks.
A key outcome of this system has been the empowerment of India’s over 150,000 local cable operators(LCOs), many of whom have faced shrinking revenues over the years. Through simple onboarding, affordable hardware, and token-linked incentives, Dabba Network is helping LCOs become neighbourhood internet distributors, ensuring stable operations while distributing economic value at the grassroots level.
Shubhendu Sharma, COO and Founder, said, “PM-WANI reimagines last-mile connectivity by placing trust in communities and local providers. Dabba Network’s journey shows how powerful that vision becomes when implemented with the right tools, incentives, and partnerships. Our scale–tens of thousands of hotspots, hundreds of thousands of daily users, and strong network demand–demonstrates that PM-WANI is not only viable but transformative. We are proud to be among the earliest companies to convert this national vision into operational success.”
As India steers toward a future where every citizen can meaningfully participate in the digital economy, Dabba Network is proving that community-first, government-aligned innovation can deliver both scale and sustainability — and help realise the long-standing dream of bringing billions of Indians online.
About Dabba
Dabba Inc is a pioneer in building and operating low cost public wifi networks in India. Founded in 2017, Dabba Inc has deployed thousands of hotspots across India at retail, residential and commercial locations serving users with super fast, super cheap internet.
Demand for data in India is roughly doubling every 18 months and Dabba is building a new data only network for a data hungry generation
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