OXIO Raises $12 Million Series A to Expand Mobile Connectivity in Latin America with First-Ever Carrier-as-a-Service Platform for Brands

OXIO, the first white-label fully-customizable carrier-as-a-service platform for brands and enterprises, today announces it has raised $12 million in Series A funding, led by monashees and Atlantico Capital, with participation from FinTech Collective and Multicoin Capital. With this latest investment, OXIO has raised a total of $20 million to date and will use the funding to accelerate the development of network and brand partnerships throughout Latin America and the United States in 2021. 

Mobile data usage is much lower in most Latin American countries compared to those of other markets, with mobile users in Mexico consuming just over 2GB a month on average. In contrast, while the average US mobile user consumes 2.5x that. Additionally, connection speeds are typically slower, and the average cost of $4.77 for 1GB of mobile data in Mexico puts it at 158th in the world in terms of affordability. 

That disparity, however, creates great opportunities for disruption from new non-traditional mobile carriers. In India, Jio’s low-cost entry into the market completely reshaped mobile internet usage from 700MB a month to 11GB (a 15x increase). Yet building a single-purpose network infrastructure (i.e., antennas, backhaul, etc.) from scratch is expensive, and it takes years to deploy due to government-sponsored auctions for commercially licensed spectrum. Up to now, earlier generations of virtual networks, known as MVNOs, tried to circumvent the infrastructure set-up costs by partnering with larger players. However, their single-network approach and lack of core, cloud-based technology still prevented them from creating truly customized and differentiated offerings and solutions for their clients. 

OXIO’s BrandVNO approach is overhauling the old virtual network model with a new white-label B2B product that allows brands and developers to launch their own customized mobile service and effectively act as a mobile operator, with none of the cost or complexity. The result is end consumers receive fast, affordable, and reliable mobile service from a well-loved brand they already interact with on a daily basis.

OXIO’s 100 percent cloud-based platform lets anyone package mobility into their core user experience with a simple API, giving them the power to integrate business components, such as loyalty, payments, rewards, and more. Plans are completely customizable so that brands can offer highly personalized experiences to their users. Another core differentiator for OXIO is its patented multi-network technology that seamlessly blends many types of networks (LTE, WiFi, Satellite, etc.) to ensure that customers are always best connected.

“We’re helping close the digital divide created by the historical array of expensive, inflexible mobile plans by enabling dynamic creation of new business models and mobile offerings tailored to people’s needs and economics -- effectively bringing access to the digitally disenfranchised,” said Nicolas Girard, Ph. D., co-founder and CEO of OXIO. “Also, by providing mobile service through its customers, OXIO gives the end-user more choice as to what brand they want to have a closer relationship with, whether it is their favorite retailer, bank, or mobile app. OXIO’s BrandVNO can fully customize its mobile plans in minutes, a process that would normally take months to implement, giving each brand client and their target consumers a more engaging and personalized experience.” 

Furthermore, OXIO provides valuable business intelligence (BI) insights to its customers, through deep data science, while ensuring user privacy is always preserved. This allows its customers to understand its users and market at a much deeper and actionable level. OXIO recognizes that with its carrier level privileges, it must embed user privacy into every component of its stack. By only aggregating first-party data (or even zero party data in many cases), OXIO gives end-users on its platform full control and visibility over what data is shared. Unlike most publisher monetization platforms that exist today, OXIO does not aggregate and sell user data.

“On one hand, consumers are concerned about who is using their data and for what, while on the other, the majority of consumers want a personalized experience from their favorite brands. As such, OXIO is not only complying with the latest regulatory requirements but is also providing solutions in the important field of user data privacy,” said co-founder and CBO, Jason Evans. “We are also building publicly available tools that let end-users understand the monetary value of their data and what our partners are willing to pay for certain attributes they are willing to share.” 

Its unique offering has allowed OXIO to build a strong customer pipeline in Mexico with signed pilot programs with some of Mexico’s largest companies across retail, convenience stores, food & beverage, and drugstores. The company expects those pilots to turn into full launches and partnership announcements in the coming months. One such BrandVNO pilot program is with ProDesarollo, one of Mexico’s most prominent organizations supporting small entrepreneurs by offering financing, insurance and business education — and now, through its partnership with OXIO, it will offer low-cost reliable mobile plans to its entrepreneurs. 

“Throughout Latin America, local communities are built and depend on small, local businesses for a variety of products and services for their day to day lives,” said Diego Duque, president of ProDesarollo. “OXIO is making it possible for the female entrepreneurs supported by our organization to offer their own customizable, affordable mobile plans to their 6.5 million end customers throughout Mexico.”

The evolution of OXIO began with the founding team’s years of research and experience in the mobile and infrastructure spaces, including engineering efforts in the protocol and networking layers, and culminating in Girard’s previous company, Aquto, being successfully acquired and Evans departing Fastly after four years. 

Girard understood that Aquto had only scratched the surface of making affordable data a reality for the hundreds of millions of underserved users across the region and that by building intuitive, modern software around the complicated infrastructure that makes up a carrier network, they could build a model that allowed both carriers and end-users to succeed. So early on, OXIO understood that while carriers are the critical backbone of the mobile ecosystem, there needed to be better mechanisms to simultaneously give companies the ability to reap the benefits of being a mobile provider, without requiring governmental licenses, millions of dollars in setup and capital expenses, and hiring the team necessary to operate a mobile network. Today, OXIO’s technology allows mobile plans to be subsidized through new business models that provide value to users, network providers, and brands at the same time.

About OXIO

OXIO is the first carrier-as-a-service platform for brands and enterprises that unbundles mobile telecom infrastructure, capturing the powerful data and true value that it emits. OXIO’s 100 percent cloud-based solution blends the wireless infrastructure of many providers, enabling something that wasn’t possible before — a custom-purposed, asset-light network delivered to each brand in a matter of days. OXIO’s B2B SaaS solution unlocks the full and uncompromising control of the wireless experience for brands, including actionable intelligence that drives clear value and results. Mobile data, long locked up in telecom silos, allows brands to get closer to their customers than ever. For more information, visit oxio.com.

Contact Information

James Christopherson

PR Manager

OXIO

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