Xanne Leo, Co-Founder & CEO, Gorilla
Blockchain is not all about just Bitcoins. Though that’s how it started, the technology has the potential to do so much more. It is revamping and reconstructing almost every industry and telecom is no exception. Despite the fact that the telecommunication sector has changed a lot over the years, still, subscribers struggle with roaming, high fees, the risk of fraud, privacy issues, and so much more. Blockchain has emerged as a revolutionary technology to address all the existing issues in the telecom industry and thus, paving the way to a new era in terms of efficiency, transparency, and security. Leveraging the immense potential of the technology, a pioneering company that is transforming the telecom industry while inspiring and empowering the world with true ownership and autonomy over their telecommunication products and services is Gorilla.
The Singapore-based blockchain-telco company runs on what it calls a Service-on-Demand model, a first in the country. This model provides access to a full suite of services, anytime–without a contract, subscription fees, or activation charges. This means users need to pay only for what they use, when they use it, ensuring a fair and modular way of using and paying for mobile services. Powered by blockchain, its proprietary SwitchBack technology enables users to fully ‘switch back’ unused mobile data to credits called Gorilla Go tokens. Unlike rollback features from other telcos, these tokens do not expire, can offset bills, and be shared among friends and family.
Thriving Against All the Odds
Gorilla began its journey in late 2019 as a global roaming SIM card company that provided connectivity in 61 countries. But unfortunately, due to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, it had to scrap that launch and accelerate its plans to become a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO), tweaking global features to suit local mobile users in Singapore. In a short time, it had to change its approach in all aspects of its team. But, despite all the challenges, it remained creative in its product roll-out and launched a new version of its mobile application and system. It ran different marketing campaigns and began to expand its product offerings to corporate clients while dealing with different aspects of sales.
In the mid of 2020, the company decided to shift its focus from global travel to Singapore local mobile plans. By March 2021, it obtained the Singapore MVNO license and partnered with MyRepublic and M1 for a connectivity agreement. Finally, in June 2021, Gorilla officially launched its Singapore MVNO products and by the end of the year, it started offering an infrastructure and connectivity product suite to its corporate customers. “Over these years, Gorilla has experienced disruption in business operation multiple times. In face of the challenges, we have innovated our business and technological approach. We have listened to our customers, market, and the industry as a whole, and we will continue to build innovative products in the connectivity and infrastructure space,” asserts Xanne Leo, the co-founder, and CEO of Gorilla.
Reimagining Telco within the Metaverse
As Web3-era innovators in the telecommunications space, Gorilla is now all set to be a part of the core infrastructure for the metaverse. It aspires to become a core player for real-world connectivity in the metaverse, where users are able to manage and maintain their connectivity directly from the metaverse. It will be part of the metaverse shared economy where users can easily purchase and activate.
“Gorilla’s partners and redistributors can easily collaborate with Gorilla through web3 permissionless-ly. This means Gorilla services will have virtually no downtime due to the extremely distributed nature of blockchain. Users will be able to use a wide range of currency to purchase Gorilla products. Users will truly own Gorilla products and will be able to transfer it to any other web3 user permissionless-ly,” opines Xanne.
Continues On Its Path of Innovation
Gorilla believes that it is everyone’s right to have access to their connectivity through Digitalization, Democratization, and Decentralization. Thus, it aims to empower end-users either directly through Gorilla’s own services, or indirectly by revolutionizing what a web3-era telco represents, and can provide. “Our customers are primarily tech-savvy and generally have a complex digital life. A majority of our customers already have heard of, or even participated in the current state of the web3 economy. Gorilla aims to accept customers directly on the metaverse and shared economy and will move towards a “web3-first” ecosystem. Gorilla customers will be able to own all of Gorilla products on web3,” affirms Xanne.
Looking ahead, the company believes that the metaverse will be a big part of the internet in the near future. Thus, it is fully committed to the development of the sharing economy in the metaverse. “Gorilla will play a critical role to provide connectivity to all digital devices in the future of metaverse, be it virtual reality (VR) devices, augmented reality (AR) devices, or Internet of Things (IoT). All of Gorilla’s plans will be metaverse-proof and will be able to meet current internet standards and web3 standards,” concludes Xanne.