Oxio, a so-called telecom-as-a-service (TAAS) provider which offers a white-label platform to help brands launch their own mobile services, raised $40 million in Series-B funding which will be used to finance expansion into the US and Latin America.

Using Web 3.0 technology, which Gartner defines as a stack of technologies based on decentralised blockchains, Oxio enables brands to offer telecom-like services to their customers by using its APIs and UIs.

Oxio’s white-label technology claims to make it possible for a brand to launch a customised mobile service, effectively acting as a mobile operator, without the cost or complexity of owning or building a network. The company has more than 250,000 active lines in Mexico. Its customers in Mexico include Grupo Bimbo, the country’s largest bread maker, and Rappi, which is a food delivery app in Latin America.

Analyst Roy Chua, the founder of Avidthink, told Mobile World Live Oxio appears to be riding two major trends in the telecoms space.

The first is the as-a-service movement while the second is exposing network APIs for programmability and automation, and to enable differentiation.

The as-a-service abstraction is happening at multiple layers of the communications and telco stack, Chua explained: from the underlying infrastructure (operator cloud, transport, RAN and core) to middleware logic, to the full platform (such as Rakuten Symphony) and now into the MVNO space.

Chua added the industry has also witnessed the power of a programmatic and service-oriented abstraction on an underlying communications platform, including Twilio and communications platforms-as-a- service (CPaaS) plays.

“The premise behind Oxio is the power of consumer brands, and to leverage the trust built on those brands into a mobile offering bears watching,” Chua explained. “With mobile devices being integral to today’s digital lifestyle, expanding the relationship with consumers into mobility provides new business opportunities, and can increase brand loyalty and stickiness.”

Chua said Oxio appears to be taking a stronger as-a-service approach compared with other players in the MVNO, MVNA and MVNE ecosystem. A company like Oxio could wrap an MVNE play and maybe even an MVNA with deep platform integration with MNOs to enable API-level differentiation from a policy and analytics standpoint, he explained.

“How open MNOs in the US will be to this type of integration remains to be seen, but it’s a promising approach,” he said.

Funding round
Oxio’s Series-B funding round was led by ParaFi Capital, a digital asset investment company focused on blockchain. Ascend, Leydon and Digital Currency Group also participated, along with previous investors Multicoin Capital, Monashees, Atlantico Capital and FinTech Collective.

The company raised $12 million in a Series-A round in 2020 which, together with earlier seed rounds, brings total proceeds raised to $65 million.

Oxio’s US launch is slated for July while a Brazil rollout is scheduled for the end of 2022. A company representative said because many of its customers do business across multiple countries, it anticipates more launches in Latin America going forward.

Headquartered in New York City, Oxio currently has 65 employees but plans to grow to more than 180 over the next 18 months to 24 months.

Most recruits will be in product and engineering, along with the company’s sales teams.