Rebtel


Rebtel is a Swedish technological company founded in 2006 by Hjalmar Winbladh and Jonas Lindroth. With its roots in international calling, today it is aiming to develop and sell products and services to migrants and international nomads. Its services include international calling, messaging and mobile money delivered in applications for Android, iPhone and Windows Phone.
In 2015 a new management team took over, launching a new strategy with additional product verticals like banking, remittance and independent work for migrants and international nomads.
As of August 2018, the company has 95 employees representing some 42 nationalities, making it one of Stockholm's most diverse technological company, and offers its products in 250+ countries worldwide.Rebtel#cite note-2| Its revenue was $95mn in 2017.

Owners and management team

Ownership
Rebtel's principal owners are European London-based venture capital funds and .
Management team

Rebtel

Rebtel allows its users to make low-cost or free international calls using its smartphone apps or landlines. Rebtel works on any phone without installing software or an internet connection. Combining traditional telecommunications technology as used in PSTN landline phone calls with modern VoIP technology and app to app communication, Rebtel allows users to call technology agnostic to any phone in the world at a low rate but with carrier level call quality.

Mobile top up money transfer

Rebtels tech platform supports money transfer in the way of MTU - mobile top up - where users can transfer credit to friends and families mobile phone subscription as a way of transferring money common in unbanked parts of the world like Africa, Central and Latin America. CEO Magnus Larsson said to Swedish business press in 2018 that 8 percent of Americans are unbanked and that banking services will be a natural next step. During the beginning of 2018 the company added more ways of sending money with the launch of Nauta for the Cuban community.

Activist program (Rebtel Activista)

Rebtel’s Activist program was launched in 2016 as a pilot in Miami, Florida, enabling anyone to sign up to become a Rebtel reseller through the independent Activist app. Since the launch, the Activist program has expanded to Houston, Texas. The founding idea was to allow influential people in migrant dense areas to sign up to become resellers and brand ambassadors for Rebtel. The program is inspired by independent work programs like those of Uber, Foodora and Taskrunner and to date over 10 000 people have joined the program, in which an Activist earns US$ 100 weekly on average according to Rebtel.

Beyond borders magazine

Late 2017, Rebtel launched and published its first edition of "Beyond Borders" - an online magazine and community curating and creating content and journalism by and for the global group of international nomads and migrants.

SDK

Rebtel launched an SDK in September 2012, allowing independent developers to integrate voice calling and instant messaging in their apps. The Rebtel SDK currently supports app-to-app communication over data, such as 3G or Wi-Fi and uses the same backend as Rebtel’s own apps. Developers can decide how to handle user management, ringtones, calling screens and other aspects of the user experience.

Sendly

In December 2013, Rebtel launched Sendly, a new app that lets users top up the prepaid mobile phones of friends and family abroad.

History

Rebtel’ founder, Hjalmar Winbladh, co-founded and spent 7 years as President and CEO of Sendit AB, taking the firm public before it was acquired by Microsoft for $127.5 million. Rebtel appointed Andreas Bernström, formerly COO of TradeDoubler, as CEO in September 2009. Bernström left the company and was succeeded by current CEO Magnus Larsson in late 2015.
In 2014 a group of former telco executives from Swedish investment company Kinnevik-owned Tele2 approached the company’s owners with a proposal for a shift in strategy.
Following a overhaul of the brand, and a product strategy shift moving to a subscription model and flat-rate pricing, and the launch of an independent work program, the company did a turnaround to growth and showed a delta growth of 40 % after one year reaching a revenue of mUSD95. CEO Magnus Larsson said to Thompson-Reuters in 2017 that he had no plans to make the company public.

Timeline