Source: www.masshightech.com
By Efrain Viscarolasaga
October 17, 2008 – OnePIN Inc. may be the most far-reaching mobile social networking technology maker that you’ve never heard of.
Since it started shipping product in 2007, Westborough-based OnePIN has deployed its mobile contact sharing and social networking platform with more than 65 service operators — but just one of those carriers operates in North America.
“We’re not really a U.S. story,” said founder and CEO Feyzi Celik, who was born in Turkey but graduated from post-graduate programs atBabson College and Boston University. “We’re here because of the talent and the funding, but the bulk of our product is in the rest of the world.”
The main reason for OnePIN’s international focus is its technology, which operates on the GSM standard, a platform widely used in the rest of the world, though used by only two carriers in the United States. As a company on an international mission, OnePIN recently bolstered its reach, opening offices in Turkey, France and Brazil to help maintain its account base in those regions. Asia is next, though the 31-person company hasn’t offered a timetable for the unveiling of an office there.
OnePIN’s platform also takes a less traditional approach to the market than most consumer-facing mobile social networking applications. The system, called CallerXchange, is not a downloadable application, but an element of a phone’s operating system, installed directly on the SIM card. As such, the firm is able to approach sales through SIM card manufacturers, rather than direct to consumers, carriers or even handset manufacturers.
To that end, OnePIN has struck a partnership with French technology developerGemalto NV, one of the largest makers of SIM cards in the world.
“When you can sell applications to tens of millions of subscribers at once, it’s really intriguing,” said David Baum, an investor in OnePIN and partner at Stage 1 Venturesin Waltham.
OnePIN is in the early stages of raising a new round of funding to help build out its infrastructure in Asia, but it has already raised $16 million over the course of two rounds. Investors include local firms Stage 1 Ventures, Egan-Managed Capital and FA Technology Ventures of Boston, as well as New York-based Greycroft Partners.
OnePIN’s platform allows users to build their mobile phonebook more easily by making the full profile of callers available for insertion into a user’s phone. In addition, customers can update the profile as information changes and share it with others. According to Celik, some 40 million subscribers worldwide have access to the service, and it has generated 40 percent usage in the market. Officials said the company is generating revenue but declined to provide additional financial details.
While the service can be termed an “advanced feature,” Celik said CallerXchange aims at the two most widely used — and basic — features of almost every cell phone — voice and text messaging — and this is attractive to carriers.
“There is a direct correlation between the phone book and carrier RPU (revenue per user),” he said. “The larger the phone book, the more customers use their phones.”
And as the foundation of mobile social networking applications, the phone book is expected to get a lot more work in the coming years. Analysts expect mobile social networking applications and usage to explode over the next several years. In a report released last month, Juniper Research predicted that revenue from such applications would surge to $7.3 billion by 2013, up from about $1.1 billion today. Usage, said the report, is expected to increase from approximately 54 million users today to nearly 730 million in 2013.