SugarBox Success story While the data revolution has catalysed the emergence of Over-The-Top (OTT) platforms and e-commerce services in the last two-three years, there are still challenges existing in the ecosystem regarding data speed and patchy internet connectivity. SugarBox Networks is a platform that enables a user to use mobile apps and digital services seamlessly without requiring internet connectivity.
Started in August 2016, the company was very similar to what offline content distribution companies do but it is slightly different. SugarBox is a homegrown, first of its kind hyperlocal CDN, which enables Digital access for the next coming billion users, something even Big Tech has struggled with. SugarBox helps businesses grow by setting up data-delivery infrastructures at various places, allowing their users to access mobile apps without the Internet!
SugarBox- Company Highlights
- Company Name-SugarBox
- Headquarters-Mumbai
- Founder-Rohit Paranjpe and Ripunjay Bararia
- Founded-2016
- Sector-Telecom
- Website-sugarboxnetworks.com
SugarBox- About and How It Works
SugarBox is a local Wi-Fi network that eliminates the users’ dependency on mobile data. SugarBox is a homegrown, first of its kind hyperlocal CDN, which enables Digital access for the next coming billion users, something even Big Tech has struggled with. The value proposition at SugarBox is to solve one of the most important problems. A technology that is re-imagining the way data delivery on the internet works making internet services more available, dependable, and contextual.
SugarBox is basically a hyperlocal CDN exposed over a local Wi-Fi network that eliminates the users’ dependence on mobile data and provides them seamless access to Apps, without any usage limits or soaring high mobile data charges. Simply put, if Netflix existed 3 decades back and users were streaming a movie at their office in Bombay, the file would be streamed to them from a server in the US.
SugarBox- Founder
SugarBox Networks is founded by Rohit Paranjpe and Ripunjay Bararia. Rohit Pranajpe
Rohit Paranjpe, First-generation serial entrepreneur, co-founder, and CEO of SugarBox. With first-of-its-kind ventures across the digital content and media ecosystem in India. 34-year old Rohit is now focused on disrupting the internet services space, making them available, affordable, reliable, and contextual for everyone. The leadership team at SugarBox comprises Ripunjay Bararia, Co-founder and CTO of SugarBox. A Tech evangelist with over two decades of experience and part many tech ‘firsts’ in India.
Other Member in the Leadership Team:
Pritesh Malde, Product Head – He has a proven track record of Ideating, conceptualizing and scaling products from scratch in B2B and B2C domains
Ishan Choudhury, Heads Strategy & Growth – With 14 years of experience across diverse strategy roles, including co-founding a hyperlocal services venture, he brings a balance of start-up exposure and key insights from running micro-ventures in large enterprises.
Rohit is grateful for the rich & diverse experience they all bring to the company. They are at a very interesting juncture in SugarBox’s journey, and their arrival brings fresh energy, expertise and perspective that will be pivotal in their rapid scale-up aspirations. The current team size is 115 and they are growing rapidly.
How Was SugarBox Founded
SugarBox started at the back of Rohit Paranjpe’s experience running an OTT service and the problems that people faced with respect to data connectivity and affordability. They built a prototype very similar to what has used on-board a Jet Airways aircraft in 2016 and carried out a pilot project at Mumbai’s Goregaon railway station. The statistics were beyond imagination with people consuming 21 GB of data per week, and some users ran through all 200 movies on the platform within 15 days! This is when they knew that they were ont something exciting.
The team tried to identify & network with people in the industry who understood technology enough to understand the concept that Rohit was trying to propose. He spoke to a friend, who was well versed with technology and he helped him understand the core components required, and the kind of expertise required to set-up the complete model and bridge the gap. He further introduced Rohit to Ripunjay, who went on to become the Co-founder and is the CTO at SugarBox.
Sugarbox- Name, Logo and Tagline
SugarBox’s showcases the Wi-Fi bars in an unbreakable curve, and the CDN structure comes in a box. The box comes with something good and happy for everyone. The good news of reliable and affordable internet, adding sweetness to life. Hence, SugarBox!
SugarBox- Vision and Mission
In te start-up world, it’s said – “find a large enough, grave enough problem to solve and you’ve hit the spot.” But here’s the interesting part. Ask people if they’re happy with their internet connection and 99 / 100 times, the answer is a No! Everyone has been at this for the last 3 years.
In the medium term, SugarBox will empower the Next Billion users worldwide to start using digital services without having to purchase a data pack or an internet connection. The long-term goal is to optimize the way data is transacted on the internet globally, making the internet over 30 times cheaper and 200 times faster.
In the Long term, SugarBox will make internet access 200% faster and 50% cheaper!
SugarBox- Target Market Size
Being a first-of-its-kind platform, there was no precedence for what SugarBox was doing, which obviously led to a plethora of challenges. First, a chunk of use cases for which they were building their CDN had never been addressed before. Then, they struggled with ecosystem-level challenges including Android fragmentation and OS limitations. After that, they ran into hardware failures and peripheral hardware issues in production environments, and many more. It will sound like a cliché, but they overcame them by thinking out of the box, collaborating, and finally, just grit and determination. It also took a special group of individuals coming together to solve these complex problems.
In the next 2 to 3 years, their Network partnerships would enable them to service over 400 million users spending over a staggering 2 billion hours every month streaming content on the go, and another 1 billion hours playing games!
SugarBox- Products/ Services
SugarBox is a one-of-a-kind hyperlocal CDN that can be integrated with an existing Local Area Network or exposed to a user over a local Wi-Fi network. By the virtue of being hyperlocal there are certain things that it does more than what the traditional CDN does, and because of the technology there more cases that can be served. This hyperlocal CDN is disrupting the economics of the internet infrastructure challenges by shifting a chunk of data consumption from expensive internet bandwidth to free local bandwidth.
SugarBox is the only network in the world that lets its users access their favorite Apps seamlessly without them having to depend on their mobile data or ISP. It sets up a better data delivery & discovery network at key places of interest (POIs) that are frequented by consumers.
SugarBox offers various benefits to its stakeholders:
- For consumers – Reliable access to apps without requiring internet connectivity or incurring data cost
- For the POI – Enhanced in-premise experience and a better understanding of their consumers
- For the App partner – Increase total available market, better user-adoption, consumption, stickiness, and monetization for the app
- In essence, SugarBox is truly unique in the ecosystem and are complementary, rather than competing to other stakeholders
SugarBox- Business and Revenue Model
The SugarBox revenue model aims to change the way that enables internet infrastructure providers to start earning via user consumption without the user having to pay for it. The model that SugarBox operates in is very similar to that of any CDN. They invest in the Cloud and Edge infrastructure that SugarBox installs. In addition to this, they bear the operating expenses of this infrastructure, along with other associated charges like lease, utility, etc. at certain POIs.
SugarBox- Investments
With the current investment, SugarBox will commence commercial services and scale up the network across public transport, revolutionizing the digital experience for over 300 million monthly unique users over the next 2 to 3 years. The short-term objective is to unlock over 2.5 billion hours of digital consumption monthly for consumers in a near captive environment, where access is otherwise limited due to patchy connectivity.
SugarBox- Startup Launch
Across all their pilot projects to date, have catered to over 1 million users. In Feb 2020, the month prior to lockdown, SugarBox had 120,000 unique users accessing Zee5 content with an average of over 27,000 users consuming content daily. The initial feedback has been very encouraging with an average engagement of 14 out of 30 minutes in the case of Hyderabad Metro. Of course, there is a lot of work to be done and the key focus at the moment is to partner with Digital services across industries, which incrementally adds to the consumer value proposition.
SugarBox is in the process of helping temporary and permanent COVID facilities with seamless digital access to enable patients in quarantine to stay connected and to bring a smile on their faces via delivering OTT services while they’re at the facility.
Over the next 2 quarters, SugarBox will be looking at expanding our outreach to other sectors including hospitality, education & retail – all of which are severely disrupted because of COVID and will have to reimagine their operating models in the year/s to come
SugarBox- Customers/ Clients
SugarBox got an internal customer Zee5 to set up POC and attract more customers. They used that user-traction to sign large networks including Indian railways and other deployment partners. The two main associations they focus on are getting more customers to use SugarBox and app partnership. Both the segments go hand in hand as the more customers will get to use SugarBox, the more partners seeing the benefits will collaborate with SugarBox, and vice versa – the more apps they provide to the customers more the interest.
SugarBox- Challenges
Delivering content using a hyperlocal CDN server is simple. Making a Digital service work without internet connectivity is a whole other topic altogether. This meant addressing user registration, personalization, security, payments, and ads – all of which require sustained internet connectivity to function. It is going to sound like a cliché, but the only way SugarBox got past these hurdles was owing to perseverance, hard work, a lot of creativity & innovation, the technical prowess of the team, and patient support from both the Zee leadership and the Zee5 team.
Well, for starters – It is a complex problem, not just from a tech point of view, but also from understanding the economics of all the stakeholders that need to work in conjunction to provide us the monster called the Internet. But it’s also probably one of the most important problems to solve in this century. This is why every Big Tech company including Google, FB, Amazon, SpaceX, etc. has been looking at finding faster, cheaper, and alternative ways to deliver internet bandwidth.
SugarBox Funding
SugarBox is a subsidiary of Zee Entertainment Enterprises Ltd. (ZEEL), in which it acquired an 80% equity stake for INR 75 crores in April 2017. In April 2020, ZEE committed to investing an additional INR 522 crores in SugarBox over the next 2 to 3 years. After the acquisition, their focus was to make Zee5 work using the platform, rather than creating a separate platform with a limited use case (Our network is limited only to certain places). So the SugarBox funding gets a boost from Zee Entertainment whenever necessary.
SugarBox is fortunate that the senior management here recognized the potential of this opportunity early on.
SugarBox- Competitors
SugarBox is unique in the ecosystem and is complementary, rather than competing to other stakeholders. Nobody does what they do. In comparison to traditional CDNs, SugarBox is able to drive faster data delivery as their infrastructure is closer to the user. The Company is also able to provide an experience guarantee on the data delivery, which a traditional CDN can’t.
Finally, SugarBox boasts of seamless access to Apps even in areas with no network or even for users without an active internet connection, both of which are outside the purview of a traditional CDN.
SugarBox- Recognitions and Achievements
Rohit Paranjpe successfully handled wide-ranging responsibilities in an illustrious career spanning over a decade. An innovator at heart, with a passion for building ecosystems that can potentially impact billions of users, also co-founded:
- Digitainment (a company that revolutionized the retail distribution of content and ran the first B2B2C OTT service in India) and,
- Mobile Infotainment (an interactive, connected in-transport infotainment and media platform, which was years ahead of its time).
- SugarBox has been awarded as one of the Top 50 Tech Innovators by Intercon Dubai and was featured in the TechTors to watch out for in 2020 by BW Disrupt.
SugarBox- Future Plans
Today, SugarBox is present across pilot deployments in 9 cities and 250 Places of Interest (POIs). They are offering services to various POIs in cities such as Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai. The company is looking to spanning its network to Delhi, Kolkata, and other cities in the next 2 years. SugarBox aims to cover PAN India Urban & Rural by the end of 2025.
There are 4 key growth pillars for SugarBox in the next 2 to 3 years:
1. Scale up the Public transport outreach in India – This includes full-scale implementation in Indian Railways, along with deployment across other key Metro networks and bus networks in the country. This growth bucket also includes a foray into Avionics to disrupt the In-flight connectivity industry as a whole. The plan is to reach 30 mn users daily and 300 mn monthly unique users through this network segment.
Frequently Asked Questions – FAQs
What is SugarBox Networks?
SugarBox Networks is a local Wi-Fi network that eliminates the users’ dependency on mobile data. SugarBox is basically a hyperlocal CDN exposed over a local Wi-Fi network that eliminates the users’ dependence on mobile data and provides them seamless access to Apps, without any usage limits or soaring high mobile data charges.
Who is the Founder of SugarBox Networks?
Rohit Paranjpe and Ripunjay Bararia are the Co-Founders of SugarBox Networks.