Circles.Life to use funding for growth in Australia and Taiwan

Circles.Life has bagged an undisclosed amount of funding from private equity firm Warburg Pincus to grow and become cash-flow positive in existing markets Taiwan and Australia. In addition, the funding will be used to further accelerate the telco’s expansion into new markets within and beyond APAC.

In a statement to Marketing, a Circles.Life spokesperson said that through this funding, the telco aims to scale its personalised digital services vertical to increase customer engagement.  According to Circles.Life, Warburg Pincus’ industry knowledge and networks of resources will enable the telco to attract outstanding business leaders and partner with entrepreneurs and management teams to grow effectively.

“The firm can also offer assistance on technology diligence and risk assessment in acquisitions and mergers and counseling on strategic technology initiatives. Very few companies make the jump from VC to PE and this fundraise is an endorsement of our business model, which is built on spectacular unit economics,” the spokesperson added.

Warburg Pincus is a New York-based private equity firm focused on growth investing with offices in the United States, Europe, Brazil, China, Southeast Asia and India. It is an investor in telecommunications and technology globally with marquee investments in companies such as Gojek, Bharti Airtel, Trax, MoMo, Inexio and others.

Recently, Circles.Life launched an AI-driven event and movie engine called "Discover" and also announced its partnership with events booking platform Sistic. Meanwhile, Circles.Life saw some leadership changes within the telco. Gaurav Gupta was promoted to head of omnichannel and martech platforms, after helming the role of senior regional manager of omnichannel marketing for a period of one year. Gupta joined Circles.Life in November 2015, and has held marketing roles such as senior media manager (omnichannel) and digital marketing manager.

This shift in Circles.Life’s marketing team comes as its senior regional manager for brands and campaign, Megan Yulga, takes on her new role of head of creative shop at the telco. In her new role, she will be in charge of building Circles.Life’s in-house creative agency called the Creative Shop, whose main focus is to grow awareness of Circles.Life not only in the markets it currently has a presence in, but also those that it plans to launch in over the course of the year.

Circles.Life has also recently appointed The Secret Little Agency (TSLA) as its lead regional creative agency. The appointment comes shortly after a creative review that saw 50 agencies expressing interest, and led to a shortlist of 27 agencies. The two companies announced the relationship through a (fake) Facebook relationship status update.

Read more:
Circles.Life eyes SG$1m in crowdfunding to ‘bail’ consumers from mobile contracts
Circles.Life calls for creative pitch as it eyes expansion