Gorilla Mobile CEO’s past, blockchain issues throw monkey wrench into its plans

Gorilla Mobile, a telecommunications startup based in Singapore, attracted a lot of media attention when it announced its presence in June.

The company is a mobile virtual network operator (MNVO), which refers to telecom providers that don’t own the infrastructure for their services. Gorilla has joined a highly competitive market with a dozen players and a mobile penetration rate of 150%.

Gorilla Mobile founder and CEO Xanne Leo / Image credit: Timmy Loen

But the startup’s debut still drew interest because of a specific claim: Gorilla uses blockchain to allow consumers to turn unused data into tokens that can be redeemed for other services.

The new telco player had scheduled the rollout of its full services in September, but a spokesperson confirmed this was pushed back to the second quarter of 2022 due to “licensing delays from regulators.”

Amid the launch delay, some concerns about Gorilla have surfaced, such as the controversy surrounding its founder and CEO’s previous blockchain endeavor. Some are also questioning whether its blockchain-based system will work in practice or whether using blockchain is even necessary at all.

Questions about CEO’s track record

Before establishing Gorilla, Xanne Leo’s previous involvement with blockchain was with Infinitus Token, which she co-founded.

Leo representing Infinitus on Pitchdeck Asia TV in 2018 / Image credit: Screengrab from Pitchdeck Asia TV’s video

Ethereum-based Infinitus was marketed as a “smart designation repository” for cryptocurrency users. The idea is that if something unexpected happens to a user or they lose access to the cryptocurrency, it can be regained through Infinitus and a pre-designated recipient. A user needs to buy an Infinitus token, which also functions as a key to enable a repository.

The company raised US$2.5 million through an initial coin offering in 2018, and reportedly listed on token exchange platform Kyber Network.

In 2020, Infinitus became inactive. Except for its YouTube and Medium accounts, all its social media accounts have now vanished. Tech in Asia also found that the Infinitus website was still active at the time of publishing, and it lists all of Leo’s team members. She also mentions Infinitus on her Linkedin profile. 

But Gorilla co-founder Eric Song and several other ex-Infinitus executives don’t mention the blockchain company in their work history. Some former high-level staff including Teresa Tan and Shang Ping Ting also appear to have Linkedin profiles different from the ones on the Infinitus homepage.

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