Telecommunications firm Deutsche Telekom has participated in a $200m financing round for Germany-based electronic device services provider Everphone and will continue to collaborate with it, Everphone CEO Jan Dzulko has told Global Corporate Venturing.
Cadence Growth Capital led the $65m series C equity portion of the round, which included Deutsche Telekom, AlleyCorp and Signals Venture Capital, while Deutsche Bank and Phoenix Insurance Company supplied a $135m warehouse financing facility.
Everphone’s service enables businesses to access smartphones, tablets and laptops for their staff on demand, with the company itself delivering the devices to employees. Its growth has been fuelled by the covid-19 pandemic and the resulting shift to home working for many enterprise staff.
Deutsche Telekom subsidiary Telekom Innovation Pool also contributed to the company’s last round, a $40m series B in July 2020 led by Signals Venture Capital and also backed by AlleyCorp and financial services provider NIBC, and has collaborated with it since.
Dzulko said: “Deutsche Telekom not only invested but also built up a strong co-selling partnership in Germany, and the investment helped to speed up internal processes and navigate the corporate structure.
“That helped us integrate into the Deutsche Telekom billing solution, which in turn creates real value for our customers: one bill for hardware and phone plans. Also, the trusted brand of Deutsche Telekom surely helped win enterprise clients like the DAX40 company Henkel.”
Everphone and Deutsche Telekom worked together on a digitisation initiative for chemical and consumer goods producer Henkel earlier this year that involved its workforce being issued almost 6,000 iPads installed with an eSim from the telecoms operator.
The series C funds will support customer acquisition and product development as Everphone looks to increase headcount, expand internationally and grow the size of a rental fleet already consisting of more than 100,000 devices.
“Co-selling in Germany was so successful we planned to use this as a market entry strategy in other countries,” Dzulko said. “Deutsche Telekom has been incredibly helpful in forming sales partnerships worldwide and we could share our experience from Germany on how to make these partnerships deliver exceptional results.”
The company will now widen its focus from enterprise customers to the mid-market and is also beefing up its technology capabilities so it can add functionality like zero-touch enrolment and the digital deployment of eSims. It intends to work with customers like professional services firm EY so they can simply replicate the Everphone service in each country, helping it expand as it goes.
Dzulko said: “We have seen the most requests in European countries first, but now we have many requests from US entities, so we decided to enter the US market earlier than expected and will hit the ground running with several deals already in the pipeline.
“We expect the US to be the largest market after Germany very soon, and therefore will invest heavily and focus on building a strong team in the US very fast.”
Photo courtesy of Sven via Unsplash.
