Freedom to WIFI're away!

We live in a global, always-connected digital age of information, where everyone wants to be connected to the Internet, even when on the move. And that’s where Ravi Pratap comes to the rescue. Along with a team of five others, he co-founded MobStac with Sharat Potharaju. Both graduates of IIT Madras, who have known each other since their school days, share how you can discover and connect to free WiFi hotspots with a single tap.

Ravi, the IIT grad who has a masters in Computer Science from Washington University in St. Louis, explains, “In our own day-to-day lives, we realised that finding and connecting to reliable WiFi is never as straightforward as it should be and has too many loopholes — What’s the password? Where can you get it from? Does the network even have Internet access? We realised that public WiFi usability is broken and needs fixing—which is why we created WiFire.”

Explaining why he thought of this, Ravi adds, “It struck me how unintuitive and tedious the process is for an average person when my mother who travels a lot, would call me up on landing at the airport, and ask me to get her an Uber, because her smartphone had no Internet access! Hyderabad airport has free WiFi for consumers, but she had no idea about how to get onto the airport WiFi! The idea was born from a desire to simplify access to public WiFi networks. The app has a country-wide database of public WiFi networks, and pops up a notification on your phone whenever you’re at a location you can connect. Our app crowdsources new network locations from existing app users and displays all networks in your vicinity.” Outside of work, he adds, “I love music,   tennis and spending time with my family. Over the years, I’ve trained in Carnatic music, been the lead vocalist in our college rock band, and also been an amateur drummer. I play tennis and feel that it’s the best stress buster for the hectic life of an entrepreneur!”

Sharat who has a masters in engineering management from Duke University talks of the challenges that came their way, “We spent many late nights at the office designing, prototyping and redesigning as we wanted a simple, seamless user experience. We began with Bengaluru, where we are based, and five other Indian metro cities and first added support for the airports, Starbucks, McDonalds and KFCs in all six cities, and other public networks and WiFi zones.

We support all Tata Docomo and Ozone networks across India. You can discover and connect to free WiFi hotspots with a single tap. We pop up helpful notifications; auto-fill out passwords, OTPs, and other tasks.” When Sharat is not working, he adds, “I’m passionate about politics and public governance and that’s why I quit my job in New York to work with Janaagraha, an NGO and have contributed to the Jaago Re campaign.”