Circles.Life ramps up hiring in Singapore as it expands its B2B offering for telcos

DIGITAL telco Circles.Life plans to boost its Singapore headcount, which is currently close to 250, by 25 to 35 per cent over the next 12 months as it scales up its Circles X software offering.

Circles X is the proprietary technology stack that has allowed the company to launch quickly in Taiwan and Australia. Telcos often have to handle many vendors and systems that slow them down and rack up costs.

Circles.Life plans to acquire more customers for its integrated cloud-based platform as more telcos digitalise, co-founder Adeel Najam told The Business Times. Circles X operates on a software-as-a-service revenue model.

Indonesia's XL Axiata used Circles X to launch Live.On, a fully digital telco brand, in October last year. Circles.Life also has a partnership with KDDI in Japan, with a digital brand povo2.0 launched in September.

The company declined to say how much Circles X contributes to overall revenue.

In Singapore, Circles.Life plans to hire for roles such as software engineers, product managers and digital marketers across new and existing business lines.

A NEWSLETTER FOR YOU

Monday, 3.30 pm

Garage

The hottest news on all things startup and tech to kickstart your week.

Sign Up

Early last year, the company laid off under 5 per cent of employees globally. Mr Najam said the retrenchments were made to "fine-tune the model of operations" as the company expanded internationally. For example, back-end operations were consolidated in the Philippines.

Despite the pandemic, Mr Najam maintained that the layoffs were not due to monetary pressure. He pointed out that the company had just raised funding from private equity firm Warburg Pincus.

Regulatory filings of Circles.Life parent Liberty Wireless, which might not fully reflect the financials of the group, showed that revenue grew by 17.3 per cent year on year to S$103.6 million for the 12 months to Dec 31, 2020. Net loss narrowed to S$14.9 million from S$21 million after a narrowing of gross loss, and government grants.

Mr Najam declined to discuss those figures, saying that Circles.Life is a private company.

Circles.Life last year underwent a restructuring exercise and incorporated its ultimate holding company in the Cayman Islands, corporate records show.

Liberty Wireless' parent Circles Asia was in June 2020 wholly acquired by Circles.Life Cayman Limited. The ultimate holding company is Circles Asia Cayman Limited.

Regulatory filings of Singapore-incorporated Circles Asia, which also might not fully reflect the financials of the group, indicated cash and bank balances of S$17.7 million as at end-December 2020, almost halved from S$34.7 million a year ago. The consolidated income statement of the company was not presented due to the new holding structure. Circles Asia owns entities incorporated across Singapore, Hong Kong, India, Australia, Indonesia and the Philippines.

Circles.Life now employs over 450 staff in Singapore, Taiwan, Australia, Indonesia, Japan and South Asia. As part of its international expansion, the company has appointed tech industry veteran Stephanie Nash to the newly created role of chief people officer.

Ms Nash has over two decades of global human resource experience in companies such as Microsoft, BHP and Allergan. She also oversaw the early stages of RedMart's growth through to its acquisition by Alibaba-backed Lazada.

Other recent additions include Dhanush Hetti, former chief technology officer (CTO) at PayPal-owned Venmo, as CTO, and Mak Chee Kiong, former chief financial officer (CFO) at Singtel Group Digital Life, as CFO.

Mr Najam said there are plans to improve Circles.Life's employee stock option plan (ESOP) programme. Currently, two months' salary worth of stock options is offered each year to full-time employees. Top performing employees receive up to eight months' salary worth of stock options.

"Everyone gets it in all countries, from the customer service frontliners in the Philippines to engineers at our R&D (research and development) hub in Singapore who are building our Circles X platform," said Mr Najam.