Crowdbotics, a software development platform with a library of ready-to-use app architectures, today announced it has raised $40 million in a Series B round led by NEA with participation from Homebrew, JSV, Harrison Metal and Cooley. The new money will be used to expand Crowdbotics’ presence at the company, CEO Anand Kulkarni told businesskinda.com in an email interview, as well as expand the company’s product offerings and invest in helping it grow its current offerings. customer base.
Kulkarni founded Crowdbotics in 2017 after launching LeadGenius, which used AI to crawl the web and discover sales leads. With Crowdbotics, he attempted to create a catalog of reusable code modules to simplify the process of planning and deploying software.
“Because up to 80% of requirements are similar between software applications — things like single sign-on flows or payment gateways don’t vary much between products — customers can build applications using strategies and reusable code modules that have worked in the past, and focus on custom engineering efforts only on the parts of their application that are truly unique,” Kulkarni said. “Customers specify custom software products using our planning engine, which is powered by a growing repository of historical data about how applications are built. Customers can translate these specs into code on Crowdbotics, typically in React, React Native, and Django, and deploy applications to the web, Android, and iOS app stores or on-premises environments, including staging and production workflows.”
Kulkarni considers Crowdbotics as a kind of ERP for creating software. ERP, or enterprise resource planning, is a type of system that helps organizations automate and manage core business processes. Instead of business processes, Crowdbotics directs the management of development processes, keeping app development in line and – with luck – on time.
Image Credits: Crowdbotics
At first glance, the idea doesn’t sound much like DhiWise, which turns visual app elements into structured, readable, and modular code that can be built on later for scalability. In terms of potential rivals, there’s also Appsmith, which provides an open source platform for in-house development teams to build custom apps, and WorkOS and Onymos, which allow developers to add enterprise features like single sign-on (SSO) and directory synchronization to apps,
“We’re displacing last-generation app building tools like Microsoft PowerApps and Mendix,” Kulkarni said confidently. “Crowdbotics pricing based on the number of features in the application, regardless of the number of users… [and] lets developers work directly in open source software development frameworks like React Native and Django, and also lets CIOs set and enforce their own development and security standards, generating readable code.
Kulkarni says most enterprises on Crowdbotics create a private module library on the platform, categorizing their own organization’s reusable components of code plus data. Developers can use these private module libraries to quickly generate their own IT-approved feature libraries that can be maintained and reused across the organization. Or they can hire project managers and developers from Crowdbotics’ gig marketplace, paying a monthly subscription for hosting, infrastructure, maintenance, monitoring, and more.
“By reusing standardized, well-supported architectures and quickly assembling modules of interoperable code, customers can quickly build stable apps or have applications built to their specifications,” added Kulkarni. “By reducing development time and budget and enabling widespread code reuse, while playing nicely with an organization’s own standards, there are benefits for the CTO, CIO and other IT department heads directly from influence their performance and the result of their department.”
There may be a bit of hyperbole there. But Crowdbotics, which has raised more than $68 million in funding to date, has certainly failed to capture customers. The startup claims to have more than 500, the largest of which is the US Air Force, which uses Crowdbotics to build flight analysis and training tools. Kulkarni says Crowdbotics’ revenue has tripled year-on-year over the past three years, and its 90-person workforce is on track to double by the end of 2023.
“Right now, the changing economy is looming for most companies, and ensuring no capital is wasted will be critical. Crowdbotics is positioned to help by enabling organizations to be more strategic and efficient with their development resources,” said Kulkarni. “Not only does it reduce overall cost and overhead, but it also creates a path for code reuse, bringing the same cost efficiencies to all future developments… We have seen the growing impact of the pandemic as digital transformation initiatives came to the forefront of every company’s strategy, and we expect the business to continue growing even into the 2023 market as companies begin to look at reusing code to reduce software development costs and turn to Crowdbotics.”
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