Gigs - Business built on the value of convenience for selling connectivity service
Blog post: eSIM#5. This week news is refreshing in terms of a business model and what might future be holding for a change in connectivity services.
Why Gigs is interesting and how you should read this article?
It is not done before! It is a new business in the domain of connectivity.
The business it forces can re-vitalize communication industry. Bringing the 2020 feeling to telecommunications.
Entrepreneurs can use it as an inspiration to take it even a step further and see how it can be integrated to “Network as Code” concept.
Short intro
Gigs is a telecom-as-a-service platform. By enabling any company to launch its own wireless service in a matter of days, Gigs helps its customers differentiate their product offering, increase customer stickiness and unlock new revenue streams through embedded connectivity. As the only end-to-end connectivity provider, Gigs offers a broad set of products and services, including premium wholesale, a hosted checkout, subscription management, payments, analytics, AI, and more [7].
Location - Berlin
Gigs is a revolutionary platform that is transforming the mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) landscape. Gigs was founded out of Germany –based in Berlin- back in 2020 and pitches itself as the “Stripe for phone plans” since it provides an all-in-one solution for launching phone and data plans, offering wholesale connectivity, checkout, payments, tax, and compliance.
Business model - high level
The business model of Gigs is rooted in the gig economy, which is characterized by short-term, contract-based tasks across various fields. Gigs allows any company to sell mobile phone subscription plans (including data, SMS and voice) to their customers. These plans are entirely customizable to a specific use case.
So the business model is simple as illustrated above. They enable offering connectivity as a service. They take network capacity from an MVNO. They put it in a process that becomes easy to use for their customer. Then all the customer needs to do is select some particular settings for their network and create plans (e.g., get 5 GB for 10 €) and find customers.
How and why
Two questions springs to mind
How would it be not more expensive then getting the service directly from an MNO
You might say why would I ever want to be an MVNO.
For 1 that is indeed what they are selling. They are selling convenience for an increased price. This convenience let´s you to test ideas without going to the paperwork, relation building and learning that you have to do if your idea involves connectivity as part of the plan. This is also the reason they say “Stripe for phone plans”. This includes wholesale connectivity, a branded checkout, payments, analytics, customer support tools, tax and compliance, and payouts.
For 2 the answer is not too easy, but they open the space up for innovators. There are some use-cases they mention or we can speculate on,
Your customer might need connectivity with the service you are offering
Travel agency: Book your flight with us to also get an eSIM package. (Example from Hubby eSIM)
Your customer is supposed to use their connectivity but they cannot get it running
Solve your customer connectivity issues with delivering your solution with connectivity embedded.
And many more the innovators can figure out.
If may be allowed to throw one out there myself: I think it is an interesting angle to enable what slicing did not manage to sell, specialized service over connectivity. Instead of getting a slice from any network operator that will improve video calls, maybe video calls services should sell their connectivity package that is optimized for video calls as part of their subscription package.
Gigs quote banks providing connectivity with their loyalty services and big companies providing and controlling employee packages in a flexible way [8].
You can hear more about Gigs in this interview.
Wrap-up
There is something brewing around telecommunication services soup. eSIM seems to be one very clear ingredient that you can identify in the soup. What other ingredients needs to be put is unclear.
Gigs gives a eSIM broth to all innovator chefs around the world to go out and try their own soup. It is up to innovators to figure out the right mix that can be based on a strong broth that is not yet well investigated.
My final remark is that Gigs is not alone in this business there are other companies that does this in a less “flashy form” such as eSIMaccess where they treat this business model as opening a eSIM shop, which, eventually, is what it is.