Martin Koppel graduated from the University of Tartu in Estonia and immersed himself in mobile technologies when feature phones and SMS gateways dominated the internet landscape. In 2007, Koppel co-founded Fortumo in Tartu alongside Rain Rannu and Veljo Otsason.
While Silicon Valley focused almost exclusively on credit cards, Koppel realized that billions of people across emerging markets in Latin America, Eastern Europe, and Southeast Asia lacked bank accounts but owned mobile phones with prepaid SIM cards. Fortumo built a frictionless direct carrier billing (DCB) API allowing smartphone users to buy games and digital subscriptions by simply charging the cost to their monthly mobile phone bill.
Fortumo partnered with Google Play, Sony, Electronic Arts, and Amazon, scaling to tens of millions in annual revenue with extreme capital efficiency. In 2020, Fortumo was acquired by London-listed fintech Boku in a $45 million transaction, solidifying Tartu as a prominent European engineering hub.
