Berlin-based smartphone-as-a-service provider Everphone has topped up with $65 million in a Series C equity raise in addition to taking $135 million in debt financing — for a total raise of $200 million.
The latest tranche of funding is led by German private equity investor Cadence Growth Capital (CGC), which is now Everphone’s biggest shareholder.
Deutsche Telekom, AlleyCorp and signals Venture Capital also participated as returning investors.
The new financing follows Everphone’s $40 million Series B, closed in summer 2020, as the 2016-founded startup reported an uplift in interest driven by the COVID-19-triggered remote working boom.
Everphone’s business takes care of the supply, support, repair/replacement and recycling of mobile devices (smartphones and tablets) for enterprises customers — billed under a per-user monthly subscription.
It’s a device rental model the startup touts as being more sustainable than alternative routes for provisioning mobile devices (such as buying devices outright) — arguing it saves environmental resources by baking in circularity from the start.
As well as taking care of its customers’ hardware procurement needs — and the refurbishment/recycling/reuse of used mobile devices — Everphone bakes in MDM (mobile device management), touting reduced IT support costs as another perk of paying it to take the device strain.
Over the past year it’s been expanding internationally — and says the new capital will go toward further internationalization in Europe and the U.S. as it vies up to win more customers.
Series C funds will also go on increasing its headcount, spending on product development and growing its active device fleet — which it says now numbers over 100,000 devices.
Commenting in a statement, Leonard Clemens, co-founder and managing partner at CGC, added: “We have been accompanying Everphone for years and see great potential for a successful positioning as a partner for customers from the enterprise and SME sectors in Germany, Europe, and the USA. Everphone‘s one-stop solution fits perfectly into our time of change enabling flexible working hours and, lately, hybrid location models. This makes Everphone an enabler of New Work and, at the same time, implements sustainability with a significant contribution to the Circular Economy.”