The circular economy is catching up with the trend across industries. It aims to reuse raw materials either completely or partially to save finite resources. Talking about smartphones, they have a limited lifespan due to the latest technologies and products. Apparently, smartphones contribute to a substantial amount of e-waste worldwide.
To bring a circular economy in this sector, it is important to make them available for reuse. While thinking of the idea of having a faster, better, and more customer-friendly way to resolve smartphone issues, everphone was born.
Circular Economy by Design
Berlin-based everphone, a phone-as-a-service pioneer, is a one-stop solution for enterprise smartphones. The startup offers an innovative approach for procuring, managing, and integrating mobile devices, including smartphones and tablets.
Now, everphone has bagged $200 million funding in a debit and Series C equity round led by Cadence Growth Capital (CGC), its largest shareholder. The company will use the funds to drive its mission and bring about the circular economy in mobile devices. Also, it will expand its activities by acquiring more business customers, expanding its presence focusing on Europe and US, product development, hiring fresh talent and increasing its device fleet that currently has over 100,000 devices.
everphone was founded in 2016 by Jan Dzulko (former managing board member at CHECK24), after facing a broken display issue. He founded the company after realising that there had to be a faster, better and customer-friendly approach to solve problems faced by smartphone users.
Operating with the mission to bring about the circular economy in smartphones, the company has already saved 58 kg of CO2 emissions with refurbished smartphones. Last year, nearly 226 million units of smartphones were refurbished all over the world, thereby saving 13 million tonnes of CO2.
Phone as a Service approach
With its Phone as a Service approach, everphone takes care of all requirements of mobile devices from purchasing to setup to distribution to employees. The company has developed highly specialised workflows to cover all key steps involved in efficiently managing mobile devices, both reliably and quickly. Also, the company handles defects and returns at a fair monthly cost.
The startup manages the supply, support, repairing, replacement service and recycling of work devices for enterprises customers. These will be handled by charging the a monthly subscription cost.
It works in two ways – Classic and CYOD. With the Classic model, everphone lets employees get the device determined by IT and purchasing departments and the rest is handled by everphone.
In the CYOD (choose your own device) model, employees can choose the device by themselves. The company will provide a fixed budget for a device and if the device chosen from the employee costs more, then the difference will be covered via an employee co-payment. It gives employees to use their devices securely without any restrictions.
Flexible upgrades
everyphone lets corporate customers obtain the devices they want flexibly for their workforce at any given moment. Handling these devices takes place directly between everphone and the individual employees. Besides environmental resources, it also saves time, as well as, valuable IT admin resources.
Besides letting employees choose their favourite model, the company also lets them benefit from flexible upgrades and change their devices. It also ensures fast and reliable replacemernt in case of defects.
To let employees choose the device they way, everphone works with a slew of brands including Samsung, Apple, Nokia, Fairphone and Google. Also, it is now the official B2B partner of the device-as-a-service strategy of Samsung Electronics in Germany.
Besides numerous SMEs and startups, everphone’s clientele includes global players – Ernst & Young, Henkel, and TIER Mobility among others.