MBR: How did the idea of Bonton Connect come into being? What motivated you to start Bonton Connect?

Samiha Tahsin: My co-founder and I founded Bonton Connect when we were both students around November 2019. As we were both students, we knew that affordability is one of the biggest concerns for other fellow students like us and it was the same in the case of internet costs.
Bonton Connect was also founded on the foundation of neighbors and communities helping each other out by sharing their Wi-Fi. After facing a problem with my mobile internet connectivity one day, I came to know that my co-founder’s neighbors shared their WiFi passwords so that if there was an emergency they could use each other’s WiFi. The idea stuck in our minds and we felt we needed to dig in further. After a significant amount of exploration, we learned that some of the slums of Adabor, Dhaka, and a small village in Gaibandha already shared their internet manually because they cannot afford the upfront cost. This proved that the essence of sharing economy for internet connectivity already existed. For our primary research, we tried to figure out whether this model was feasible hence my cofounder, Omran, created an app that helped us to determine the Wi-Fi density in Dhaka city. Every square meter of Dhaka city has a median number of 6 Wi-Fi networks and a maximum of 16 WiFi networks visible at all times, this means enough wireless internet signals are surrounding the people who can not afford mobile internet. Our idea gradually evolved and Bonton Connect came into being.

MBR: Could you please give us an overview of Bonton Connect in terms of services you offer, the number of clients you have and the size of your business, etc.?

Samiha Tahsin: Bonton Connect is a WiFi sharing platform that allows people to share their WiFis and helps people to connect to the shared WiFi at an affordable rate. When someone shares their WiFi through Bonton, the host (one who owns the router) can earn hours of internet time. The host can then later spend his hours on someone else’s shared network when he/she is away from home. We are essentially making the internet more available and affordable. We have launched our application with the option to “Share WiFi” in March 2021, and previously we partnered with local Internet Service Providers to provide hotspots in four different parts of Dhaka. We are currently allowing homeowners and businesses to share their WiFi through our application all over Bangladesh. Bonton currently has 300 users and 60 people sharing their home WiFi all over Bangladesh since our launch last month. 

MBR: How was the response of people in the initial stage? What is the core competitive advantage of Bonton Connect?

Samiha Tahsin: People were skeptical about sharing their WiFi in the beginning, since the question of data security arises. The WiFi security protocols have evolved, and our application blankets the router of the person sharing their WiFi with security protocols to defend against Man-In-the-Middle attacks and eavesdropping, among other common as well as uncommon attacks. We reached out to the people with security concerns to explain our added security features and we think after that initial understanding, the response is quite positive. The competitive advantage of Bonton is that scaling for us is a marketing problem. Our application can automate any off-the-shelf routers off the market and let a person share their Wi-Fi no matter the host user’s technical proficiency. Bonton makes use of the existing infrastructure of WiFi networks to provide people with affordable internet. We also charge our users on a per-day basis rather than on a volume basis, meaning our internet does not come with a data limit. This way people don’t have to worry about using up all their data volume at once, which according to our surveys is a major anxiety leading to low internet usage.

MBR: What are the challenges Bonton Connect is currently facing in general and how you are mitigating those?

Samiha Tahsin: One of the key challenges that Bonton faces is that educating people about the concept of WiFi sharing, which is fairly new in the form of an application. The concept of WiFi sharing has existed manually (via distributing passwords) only. The other challenge that we face is the security concerns, a lot of our customers generally ask us about whether it is possible to be hacked by a stranger who is using their Wi-Fi. A lot of people also have the misconception that we are an Internet Service Provider, instead of a platform. We are trying to mitigate these challenges by educating our target audience about our application through our social media platforms and our content. We think we still have a long way to go about facing these challenges better.

MBR: How a pandemic situation has affected your business?

Samiha Tahsin: The pandemic has been an ongoing battle for businesses and in our case, it has been no different. Since the inception of Bonton, we have been going through recurrent lockdowns and we have had to change our course of action. For instance, we had planned to launch a few more hotspot zones in a few slums by partnering with Internet Service Providers to get that initial traction of users but it has been difficult to do that within the lockdown. However, due to the lockdown internet has become one of the necessities and this means there is rising demand. Therefore, people are more inclined to use our services and hence we have enabled the “Sharing Option” throughout the country to meet that demand.

MBR: What are the strategic priorities of Bonton Connect at the moment? How do you hope to scale up the business?
Samiha Tahsin: We are aiming for traction of users in the market currently and also iterating our application with the next updates. It’s been a month since our launch, and we are currently receiving feedback from our customers. We are trying to incorporate as much feedback as possible for our next iteration. Our focus is on user growth and improving user experience currently. The goal is to create mobile internet free since we believe in this modern era it is a necessity. We hope to scale up our business in a more efficient way by implementing AI for automating our routers so that people have a proliferation of networks around them that they can use WiFi on the go and never run out of mobile data volume.

MBR: What are the lessons you have learned in terms of growing a business? What are the other plans of Bonton Connect?

Samiha Tahsin: Growing a business is a neverending process just like learning is. We have learned that our users have two of the most important roles for our business, being the best critic and also the prime supporters. During the pandemic, when we just started it seemed like the world decided to pause at the very moment. However, when our team was within the four walls of their homes, we realized how important of a problem we are solving since the internet has been one of the biggest dependables for our daily lives. We have learned to be steady and continue to do what we are doing for our passion for solving the problem.
Bonton Connect wants to make the internet essentially free and build an inclusive world where everyone can be online in the future.