Circles.Life has closed a Series C round of financing led by Sequoia India to expand to international markets, and to continue to redefine the mobile telecom sector by expanding the company’s range of personalised digital services.

The company plans to launch in more than five countries in the next 18 months, including Taiwan in Q2 2019 and Australia in Q3 2019 and will invest more than $50 million in each launch. Circles.Life has already signed deals with key networks which have the most extensive coverage in both countries and will be the first to introduce a 100% digital telco experience in these markets.

“Circles.Life was built on a mission to give power back to the customers. Because of this mission and our innovative digital platform, we’ve raised the bar in Singapore’s telco space. The significant investment from a blue-chip venture capital firm is a testament to the impact we bring to the industry. We plan to offer more personalized digital services and revolutionize the telco industry globally, using our tech stack, Circles-X,” said Rameez Ansar, Co-founder & CEO of Circles.Life.

Circles.Life has garnered over 5% of Singapore’s mobile subscriber market share in a short period of time, making it the country’s fastest-growing telco. The company’s NPS score, which tracks customer satisfaction, customer experience and loyalty, sets a new bar for the sector with a rating of 50+, which far outstrips its competitors.

“Circles.Life has a fresh and disruptive approach in reimagining what the telco experience of the future can be for millions of people. It’s an asset-light model, combined with sophisticated and battle-hardened cloud-based software, allowing them to partner with progressive telcos to serve millennials with better experience, more convenience, and more competitive mobile data rates,” said Mohit Bhatnagar, Managing Director at Sequoia Capital India Advisors.

Given the results in Singapore, with Sequoia India’s support, Circles.Life plans to replicate their success in new markets. To drive this, Circles.Life has brought key senior industry hires on board. Ajinkya Mukhopadhyay, who was previously Joint Head of Asian Telecoms Investment Banking at UBS AG and Group Head of M&A at Telstra, joins Circles.Life as Head of Business Development & International Expansion.  Waseem Yusaf joins us as Head of International Launches from Nokia, where he had been involved in launching and expanding multiple networks around the world.

In parallel to expanding internationally, Circles.Life will continue to redefine the mobile telecom sector with additional investment in the company’s range of personalized digital services. This is powered by the opening of a data science and engineering center in Bangalore, and acquisition of several companies, including Fratics and Klassify, to leverage their machine learning capabilities. The company has committed another S$25 million to its engineering centre. 

Founded in Singapore in 2016, Circles.Life is a personalized digital service that is re-imagining how mobile telecom services can be offered with a truly differentiated business model, technology stack, and approach to product development. At the core of Circles.Life’s unique business model is Circles-X, a proprietary telco-in-the-cloud operating system (OS) which delivers a highly flexible and completely digital customer experience across the entire customer service journey. As a result, 80% of subscribers engage with the Circles.Life app on a weekly basis.

Unlike a telco or MVNO, Circles.Life has eliminated all proprietary hardware and appliances and moved the entire architecture to a software-based cloud environment.  The company’s unique technology stack and business model enables it to launch new services in weeks, not years. Circles-X’s smart analytics and API-based platform supports easy third-party integration with a range of partners, from e-commerce, entertainment and transit companies, and also allows Circles.Life to develop their own offerings.  Some of the company’s recent digital lifestyle produces include Discover, an AI-driven mobile events app, and Ride for Rewards, a tie-up with Singapore’s EZ Link contactless transit smart card that allows commuters earn points that can be redeemed from a range of partners, including Grab and Lazada, as well as extra data from Circles.Life.