Cover Abraham Burak is the co-founder of eSIM marketplace Airalo (Photo: Abraham Burak)
Abraham Burak is the co-founder of eSIM marketplace Airalo (Photo: Abraham Burak)
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With over 10 million users worldwide, Airalo is eliminating the burden of costly overseas data bills. Co-founder Abraham Burak shares the strategies he used to grow the company’s user base and cement Airalo as a leading eSIM marketplace
Airalo is revolutionising the way travellers stay connected while abroad.
Founded in 2019 by Abraham Burak and Ahmet Bahadir Ozdemir, the Singapore-started company is solving the common problem of expensive international roaming charges by providing affordable eSIM technology. Its approach lets users purchase and activate local data plans in over 200 countries and regions directly on their mobile phones, eliminating the need for physical SIM cards or the hassle of finding local providers upon arrival.
In August 2023, Airalo closed a $60 million Series B round. Less than a year after that milestone, the company surpassed the 10 million user mark. The company also announced the launch of Airalo Partners, a B2B and B2B2C platform that empowers businesses to buy, manage and share eSIMs with their customers or employees.
We asked Burak how he took his company from a modest database of 1,000 to over 10 million users, and what advice he has for businesses to scale their user base effectively.
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Begin with a clear mission
Above Airalo is a world-leading eSIM marketplace that connects users to over 200 regions (Photo: Airalo)
Airalo is a world-leading eSIM marketplace that connects users to over 200 regions (Photo: Airalo)
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From the onset, Airalo’s mission was clear: to revolutionise travel connectivity by making it affordable and accessible. “Everyone deserves a more affordable and accessible way to connect when they travel,” Burak says, who is the company’s COO. This mission has driven its exponential growth, cementing its place in the travel tech industry.
“Strategy is a kaleidoscopic notion. Sometimes, it’s about being first; other times, it’s about being better. In one area, it’s about putting all our eggs in one basket; in another, it’s about diversification. It involves maintaining stability while advancing and turning setbacks into opportunities. Most of the time, it’s choosing what not to do.”
He adds that strategy is an “art and craft but also science and big data”, which makes pinning down all the key strategies in building Airalo challenging.
It all starts with people, continues with people and stalls with people. Building the right team and navigating the stages of team development is crucial for sustained growth
For Burak, growth is fundamentally about people. “It starts with people, continues with people and stalls with people. Building the right team and navigating the stages of team development, as the late Bruce Tuckman delicately put it—forming, storming, norming and performing—is crucial for sustained growth,” he says.
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Refine your offers instead of pivoting
In Airalo’s early days, Burak handled customer support, gaining invaluable insights into user needs. This hands-on approach laid the foundation for agile feedback loops and research methods. Today, a dedicated global team ensures Airalo’s products meet user needs with the optimal product and price mix in every country.
The co-founder’s knack for identifying market gaps is rooted in personal intuition and market intelligence. He believes that confidence in ideas and scepticism of the status quo make entrepreneurs innovative. He says, “People skilled at identifying market gaps don’t necessarily conceive vastly different ideas from us. They simply possess the confidence to take those ideas more seriously.”
Rather than making drastic pivots, Airalo focuses on refining its offerings. “Rather than pivoting, we are refining. We focus on making Airalo more affordable and accessible while eliminating any expenses or features that our users don’t find valuable. We also continuously expand our product portfolio globally in markets where Airalo can effect change.”
Foster a culture of resilience
As a company providing connectivity to travellers, Airalo’s biggest hurdle was the Covid-19 pandemic. But closing their Series A funding right before the pandemic kept them out of the red. “We always had a broad understanding of waste and were vigilant about the levels of discrepancy between our movements and actual progress. This lean approach kept us in good shape and once the travel restrictions were lifted, Airalo hit the ground running.”
Burak also emphasised the importance of balance in operations and culture: “We were fortunate to have team members who showed resilience throughout the global crisis. This enabled us to foster a collective culture of ‘this, too, shall pass’ during difficult periods.”
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Position your offerings to boost customer acquisitions
Airalo’s marketing strategy positions its product as a necessity rather than a luxury. This perspective drove their Summer 2023 campaign featuring John C McGinley as a doctor prescribing Airalo as a painkiller.
Burak shares, “Just as physical pain can hinder your enjoyment of life’s pleasures, the mental discomfort of expensive, poor or lack of connectivity can overshadow the joy of exploration and discovery during a trip. This product-as-a-painkiller perspective helped global audiences resonate better with what we offer.”
To facilitate global expansion, the company implemented hyper-localised marketing strategies and leveraged incentives and social proof. “We aimed to build trust in our brand and guide potential customers toward the ‘aha’ moment, where our solution became the obvious choice.”
Create an environment for agile leadership
Burak views himself more as a moderator than a traditional leader. He fosters an environment where team members are accountable and collaborative. His leadership style is rooted in continuous learning, knowledge sharing and creating spaces for collective thinking.
“We’ve created a culture where everyone holds themselves accountable to their ‘inner supervisor’, excelling through self-monitoring. Each person aspires to produce work that is readily presentable to anyone, at any time. This facilitates collaboration.”
According to him, effective leaders balance seemingly opposing traits: high-level planning with practical realities, speed with accuracy, courage with caution and individual needs with collective goals. This dualistic leadership style is crucial in a fast-growing company.
The immediate value our products add to people’s lives also attracts individuals who are serious about their meaning-making and convictions about what work should entail
He credits the company’s mission for attracting and retaining top talent. “I think the immediate value our products add to people’s lives also attracts individuals who are serious about their meaning-making and convictions about what work should entail.
“Our People Department also consistently improves the material benefits of working at Airalo and treats everyone as a shareholder. This represents an important paradigm shift in a world where traditional wage-based employment is becoming increasingly obsolete,” he says.
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Pour from a full cup
To stay balanced and in good spirits, Burak believes in enjoying simple pleasures and taking things one day at a time. He says, “Building Airalo sometimes felt overwhelming, with emotional ups and downs and many decisions to make. Things like having a good morning coffee, ending the day with no major issues, learning a new word from a team member, enjoying a quick walk thanks to our flexitime policy, executing a few good-enough small steps with pleasure and celebrating small wins with gratitude add up to significant achievements for self-care and well-being.
“We must honestly acknowledge the problem: head-on capitalism and a healthy life are in direct conflict. When it comes to work-life balance, striving simultaneously for a good home life and a good work life is an inevitably strenuous ambition.
“It may help to see work as a tool and enabler of what truly matters, without making one’s identity vulnerable to one’s job. The saying ‘Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life’ rings true. Discover where your talents and aptitudes meet the needs of the world and spend the majority of your time at that nexus while hiring for and delegating everything else.”
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