Founder Ravi Rishy-Maharaj Website www.gigsky.com Motto World Mobile Data | Area served Global Headquarters Palo Alto Founded 2010 | |
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Industry Mobile broadband
Electronic flight bag Key people Ravi Rishy-Maharaj, CEO
Raghu Tarra, CPO
Tony Wyant, CTO | ||
Gigsky ceo connected abroad without the headache mad money cnbc
GigSky is a mobile technology company offering a global mobile data service. By means of its app and a GigSky SIM card, or an Apple SIM, it enables users to connect to a local data network while overseas. GigSky also offers services for SMB and enterprise customers, and provides mobile data for airline EFB solutions.
Contents
History
GigSky was founded in 2010 by Ravi Rishy-Maharaj. An important development for the company happened in 2014, when Apple launched an innovative technology called Apple SIM to instantly connect travelers with local data networks internationally. In June 2015, Apple and GigSky teamed up to offer travelers automatic high-speed wireless connection to local data networks by means of iPads with Apple SIM cards.
Norwegian Air Lines started using GigSky’s service in late 2013 to support its electronic flight bag (EFB) product. In August 2015, GigSky announced a deal with Obi Worldphone – a device backed by former Apple CEO John Sculley – to integrate the GigSky service into Obi’s SF1 and SJ1.5 devices. In order to help companies expense mobile data use, GigSky struck a deal with Concur in September 2015.
Services
GigSky provides a data-only service that enables users to instantly connect their mobile phone to a local data network in more than 140 countries and territories. Before traveling, the user downloads the app, makes a profile and adds a credit card. When arriving to another country, the app, available for Apple iOS and Google Android, auto-detects the country. The GigSky SIM card can be put in either the main or secondary SIM slot. The customer is then able to purchase a local data plan.
In case of an Apple SIM-equipped iPad, the user chooses the GigSky option on the iPad and picks the available plan, pays up and starts surfing. The network that the iPad has created can be shared by other users by way of the hotspot feature. This way, several users in the same area can benefit from the pre-paid service. The pre-installed Apple SIM can be bought only in mobile iPads sold in the US and the UK, but since June 2015, it has been sold separately in 10 other countries.
GigSky varies the charge based on what it pays in specific countries. Data can be pre-purchased as needed for a given location with no risk of high cost overages. A single account can manage multiple SIMs within the app, so that an entire group of SIMs can be managed based on team or company department.