Shaka, the London-based embedded mobile connectivity startup, has announced a £780K ($1M) seed funding round. Coming out of stealth mode to make the announcement, shaka is using eSIM technology to allow brands to offer mobile packages to consumers at the click of a button. 

The round was led by Haatch, an award-winning UK seed fund, Purple Ventures, the VC firm backing purpose-led tech startups in Central and Eastern Europe and Antler, the most active private early stage VC in Europe, alongside a number of prominent telecommunications angel investors. 

Lack of access to mobile infrastructure, legacy telco systems, lengthy timelines and high set-up costs are among some of the biggest challenges for brands looking to monetize their customers with mobile plans. shaka is working with brands to offer mobile plans to customers instantly, at no cost, with a SaaS end-to-end product and a simple API layer, driving significant revenue opportunities and customer loyalty in the process. 

shaka is able to do this through innovation in eSIM technology. This technology is already revolutionising the telco space by disrupting a value chain dominated by traditional telecoms providers and shaka has already signed up a number of large brands to adopt the new technology.

The latest figures suggest that the eSIM market is already worth $4.7bn. By 2025, 98% of operators globally plan to offer eSIM technology in mobile devices and eSIM penetration is expected to jump from 20% in 2023 to 80% over the next five years. The impact of this change means the market value is expected to increase to $16.3BN by 2027, driven partially also by Apple’s switch to eSIM-only handsets.

The funding round will allow shaka to realise the potential of this market growth by onboarding a set of impressive high-profile customers from across the entertainment, retail and fintech verticals who have already requested to offer mobile packages through shaka. The funding will allow shaka to start building on its global vision, expanding beyond the UK market to enable brands to deploy networks to all of their customers around the world. 

“After banking and insurance, telecoms is next on the list of legacy industries ready to be disrupted and fundamentally uprooted with technology and a truly customer-first approach. Offering mobile plans to your customers – something that today takes over a year and costs millions of dollars to do, can be done with shaka with a single API call.” 

Jonas Jelinek, co-founder of shaka

“Brands are closer to consumers than ever before, giving them a unique vantage point to offer tailored mobile packages. shaka recognizes this shift and is empowering businesses to leverage this proximity to better connect with and monetize their customers through mobile services. I can’t think of a better team than Jonas, Charlie and Eli who impressed us with their individual track records in telco and as serial entrepreneurs but also with the way they complement each other.”

Fred Soneya, Co-Founder & Partner at Haatch

The founders of shaka first met during an Antler residency in London in 2023. An international team from Czechia, Israel and UK, they are serial entrepreneurs with a complementary skill-set following decades of experience in telco, software engineering and venture-building.

Jonas Jelinek is the CEO and co-founder. Born in Czechia, he is the founder of a fiber broadband telco business with experience working at top-tier consulting firms such as BCG and Altman Solon and leading strategy and operations for the fintech scaleup, Teya. 

Eli Magzimof is the CTO of shaka. He is a serial entrepreneur with a number of successful exits and was formerly R&D Director at Phantom Auto, an Israeli autonomous vehicles company. 

And Charlie Newman is a British serial entrepreneur who has founded two SaaS, VC backed startups in London. Charlie has held a number of senior product, leadership and software engineering roles at startups and began his career at American Express. 

Sarah Finegan, Director at Antler, comments, “Antler is doubling down on its investments in eSIM technology to bring information and communication to more people around the world. We backed Airalo in Singapore which is now bringing affordable connectivity to five million global users and we believe shaka has the same growth potential. This is a world-class founding team committed to disrupting one of the world’s largest industries. We are delighted to have supported shaka from day zero and are very excited to see what impact they have on a global market worth $3 trillion.”

Sarah Finegan, Director at Antler

About shaka

shaka is an embedded connectivity provider that is disrupting the $3 trillion telecom market. The shaka platform enables brands to offer mobile packages to their customers on a branded network in minutes, through the shaka API or shaka end-to-end solution. More information available at www.shaka.tel.

About Haatch

Haatch are strategic pre-seed and seed investors that invest in B2B SaaS companies solving deep pains in the present and/or creating massive impact for organisations. Haatch accelerates Pre-Seed B2B SaaS companies to their first £1m ARR and to build the infrastructure to get to £10m+.

About Purple Ventures

Purple Ventures is a Central and Eastern European venture capital fund investing into software-enabled innovations in pre-seed and seed stages. We are entrepreneurs and ex-founders helping ambitious companies build a global business from scratch. 

About Antler

Antler is the world’s day zero investor that inspires, enables, and invests in visionary founders everywhere. Founded on the belief that talent is everywhere but opportunity is not, we remove the barriers to entrepreneurship so more people can launch sustainable businesses that solve meaningful problems, drive innovation, and improve lives. We partner with the most early-stage entrepreneurs around the world through our residencies in 27 cities across six continents—Austin, Berlin, Bangalore, Jakarta, London, New York, Singapore, Stockholm, Sydney, and beyond. As an extension of our founders’ team, our global community backs them from the beginning and keeps backing them with team formation, deep business model validation, initial capital, global scaling, and follow-on funding, with a personal passion that goes beyond traditional investing. To date, we have brought more than 900 startups into existence that are delivering paradigm-shifting solutions across all industries, with the goal of backing more than 6,000 by 2030.