The founders want to use the fresh money to expand their team and further develop their own software.
(Photo: Gigs)
Hamburg So far, mobile phone tariffs from popular third-party brands such as Aldi-Talk have been complicated to set up and therefore hard to find. The German founders Hermann Frank (35) and Dennis Bauer (31) want to change that with their company Gigs. But their vision is even bigger: They are working on a digital platform that would detach mobile phone sales from network operators worldwide.
A provider like Aldi-Talk would then no longer be exclusively dependent on its previous partner Telefónica. In addition to creating their own tariffs or data offers, companies could also manage their employees’ mobile phone contracts, independently of telecom giants such as Vodafone or AT&T.
A number of investors have now given gigs growth capital for this, as the Handelsblatt learned in advance. As part of a Series A financing round, around 20 million US dollars flowed into the company with locations in Berlin and San Francisco.
The founders Frank and Bauer were able to attract prominent names from the tech scene: The investors include Gradient Ventures, a start-up fund of the digital group Google, Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO of the mobility giant Uber, and Max Tayenthal, co-founder of the digital bank N26.
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Previously, Gigs, which was part of the renowned Silicon Valley start-up program Y-Combinator in 2021, was primarily funded by convertible loans. With the fresh money, the founders want to expand their team, which currently has around 35 employees, and further develop their own software.
Gigs wants to turn telecommunications into a service
The self-confidence and the demands of the founders are high. Co-founder and CEO Frank compares Gigs to payment service provider Stripe or Amazon’s cloud subsidiary AWS. Similar to these role models, they want to “create” a new service category: Telecom-as-a-Service.
In 2021, Gigs was part of the renowned start-up program Y-Combinator in Silicon Valley.
(Photo: Gigs)
Founder Frank says, “We enable companies to integrate cell phone and data plans into their own product portfolio and sell them worldwide.” His partner Bauer, who serves as President at Gigs, describes the telecom industry as largely “closed system” which makes it more accessible want to do.
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The days when companies had to negotiate with network operators for months in order to resell their services are over, he promises. With gigs, corresponding offers could be created faster and cheaper.
In fact, third-party brand tariffs such as Tchibo Mobil or special tariffs from football clubs such as FC Bayern are already possible today, but they are expensive to implement and often linked to a network operator. It remains unclear whether the big players will work together with a start-up in the long term that wants to contest part of their margin.
According to the company, Gigs’ previous partners include the Telekom subsidiary T-Mobile, the US telecom giant AT&T and the Spanish Telefónica.
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