If you have ever landed in a foreign country and frantically toggled airplane mode to avoid a surprise $50 roaming charge, you understand the problem Roamless is trying to solve. The startup, which operates out of Istanbul and the UK, is pitching itself not just as another eSIM marketplace, but as a legitimate global mobile operator.
Investors are buying into the vision. Roamless has raised a $12 million Series A round led by Rasmal Ventures, with participation from Shorooq Partners and Revo Capital. This fresh injection brings the company’s total funding to $18 million.
According to the company, the platform is already live in over 200 destinations and serves more than 1 million travelers. But the goal isn’t just coverage; it’s to overhaul the legacy billing infrastructure that makes travel connectivity painful.
“Cross-border connectivity is broken — we’re fixing it.”
The end of expiration dates?
The current travel connectivity market is bifurcated. On one side, you have traditional carriers with expensive roaming add-ons. On the other, you have a wave of eSIM startups (like Airalo or Holafly) that generally act as resellers for local data packages. You buy 5GB for France, and if you don’t use it in 30 days, it vanishes.
Roamless is betting on a different architecture. Instead of selling time-bound, region-specific bundles, it treats the world as a single coverage zone. Users load funds into a digital wallet, and the app charges for data on a pay-as-you-go basis as they travel. Crucially, the balance never expires.
Under the hood, the startup has built an API-driven network layer that connects to multiple carriers in each country. Rather than relying on a static agreement with a single partner, its proprietary routing engine dynamically switches users to the best available local network based on signal quality.
A team of telco veterans
While many travel-tech startups are founded by generalists, Roamless is run by a “telco mafia” with deep roots in infrastructure and routing. The five co-founders have over a century of combined experience in the sector:
- Ali Gazioglu (CPO) and Asim Alp (CTO): Spent over a decade at Linxa, a B2B telecom software firm, building carrier-grade routing systems.
- Emre Demirel (CEO): Brings the capital allocation perspective as a former partner at Turkven Private Equity.
- Selim Aykut (CXO): Formerly of Accenture’s Fjord practice, focusing on the user experience.
- Cengiz Oztelcan (Board Member): A veteran executive with multiple CEO roles across the telecom industry.
This technical pedigree was a key selling point for investors. Shorooq Partners, which led the company’s $5 million seed round, noted that this wasn’t just a consumer app play, but a structural bet on the future of connectivity.
Mahmoud Adi, General Partner at Shorooq, described the venture as an opportunity to “redefine traditional models” where legacy carriers have failed to innovate. Similarly, Revo Capital’s Cenk Bayrakdar pointed to the team’s “competence in telecom and software” as the differentiator in a crowded market.
Scaling the infrastructure
With $12 million in the bank, Roamless plans to expand its footprint and refine its routing technology. The challenge now is moving from a travel utility to a default setting for the modern traveler—digital nomads, business flyers, and tourists who expect their phone to simply work when they cross a border.
The company faces stiff competition from both incumbents and well-funded eSIM competitors. However, by eliminating the “use it or lose it” anxiety of traditional data plans, Roamless believes it can become the primary connectivity layer for the internet-era traveler.
