A startup is racing to turn everyone into an internet service provider

Unlimited mobile data is nice. Who wouldn’t want to watch cat videos on the go all day, every day without a care in the world?

But the truth is most of us really don’t need that much data. In Southeast Asia, where people burn through 3.6 hours of mobile internet every day (more than the US or China), the actual amount of data used per month is actually on the low side. Singapore, the country with the second-highest mobile penetration in the region, consumes just 2.7GB of mobile data each month on average, according to the country’s Infocomm Media Development Authority.

Photo credit: Unsplash

Tay Yen Pei also sees the disparity between supply, demand, and actual usage, leading him to build Simplify, a Malaysian company that aims to be a simple way for users to buy and sell mobile data on the fly.

Since Tech in Asia spoke to him in late 2016, Tay has hatched bigger plans for the service. Instead of just mobile data, he now wants to help users buy and sell broadband internet using the same technology.

Demand, meet supply

The way Simplify works is pretty straightforward. If you have extra mobile data to sell, you can turn on your personal hotspot via Simplify to let nearby users discover your service and purchase internet access from you. There are no contracts, cancellation fees, and Wi-Fi passwords required.

Since its launch, the startup’s target market has been tourists.

While there’s a bevy of free and paid internet options available, data roaming is almost always expensive everywhere, and finding and purchasing a travel SIM card or a pocket Wi-Fi can be troublesome. Public Wi-Fi is also seldom secure – that is, if you can access it at all. In fact, according to Simplify’s own data, 60% of tourists don’t even bother with a travel SIM card these days.

Photo credit: Office of Digital Learning

But the company not only connects data-hungry travelers with data-rich locals. According to Tay, about 60% of Simplify’s sellers are ride-hailing drivers, who sell mobile data to their passengers so the latter can surf the internet while on transit. Other hotspots that the company hopes to enable include hotels, transit hubs, and food and beverage outlets.

At the time of writing, the Simplify app has 60,000 total downloads, with 1,400 active sellers of mobile data each month. It has been acquiring users through subsidies.

Malaysia is its top market with 80% of users, followed by India and the US. And while the average revenue per user on the seller side currently stands at US$0.56 per month, Tay shares that there is a seller in the US currently making about US$56 per month off of Simplify’s service.

In terms of the customer acquisition cost, it’s about US$20 per seller and US$26 for buyers. He expects the lifetime value of a seller to go up to as high as US$240 eventually.

You, me, and ISP