CrowdBotics, a software development platform with libraries of pre-built application architectures, today announced it has raised $40 million in Series B funding led by NEA with participation from Homebrew, JSV, Harrison Metal and Cooley. The new cash will be used to expand Crowdbotics’ enterprise presence, CEO Anand Kulkarni told TechCrush in an email interview, as well as invest in growing the company’s product offerings and growing its existing customer base.
Kulkarni founded Crowdbotics in 2017 after launching LeadGenius, an AI used to scour the web and find sales leads. With Crowdbotics, he sought 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 differ much between products—customers have built mechanisms and reusable code modules in the past, and custom engineering efforts are only focused on the truly unique parts of their applications.” They focus,” Kulkarni said. “Customers define custom software products using our planning engine, powered by a growing repository of historical data on how applications are built. Customers have included converting these specifications to code on Crowdbotics, particularly in React, React Native, and Django, and deploying apps to web, Android, and iOS app stores or on-premises environments, and production workflows.
Kulkarni envisions Crowdbotics as a form of ERP for software innovation. ERP, or enterprise resource planning, is a type of system that helps organizations automate and manage core business processes. Rather than business processes, CrowdBotics streamlines administrative work. Development Helping keep processes, application development on-line and – with any luck – on time.
Image Credits: Croodbotics
On the surface, the idea isn’t dissimilar to DhiWise, which converts visual application components into structured, readable, and modular code that can later be built for weight. In terms of potential competitors, Appsmith, which also provides an open-source platform for internal development teams to build custom apps, and WorkOS and Onymos, which allow developers to add enterprise features to apps like single sign-on (SSO) and directory synchronization.
“We are displacing the last generation of app building tools like Microsoft PowerApps and Mendex,” Kulkarni says confidently. Regardless of the number of users, CrowdBotics rates based on the number of features in the app… [and] It allows developers to work within open source software development frameworks like React Native and Django, and also allows CIOs to define and enforce their own development and security requirements – generating readable code.
According to Kulkarni, most enterprises on Crowdbotics create a private module library on the platform, allocating their own organization’s reusable code and data components. Developers can quickly generate these custom module libraries into IT-approved feature libraries that can be maintained and updated within Org. Or you 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 combining interoperable code modules, customers can quickly build stable applications or have applications tailored to their requirements,” added Kulkarni. “When playing well by an organization’s own standards by reducing development time and budget and facilitating code reuse, there are benefits for CTOs, CIOs and other IT department heads that directly impact their performance and their department’s bottom line.”
There can be a bit of stiffness there. But CrowdBotics, which has raised more than $68 million in funding to date, has failed to capture customers. The startup says it has more than 500, the largest of which is the US Air Force, which is building CrowdBotics’ flight analysis and training tools. According to Kulkarni, Crowdbotics’ revenue has tripled year-over-year for the past three years, and its 90-person workforce is on track to double by the end of 2023.
“A change economy is looming over most businesses these days, and ensuring capital is not wasted is a critical concern. CrowdBotics is positioned to help organizations by allowing them to be more strategic and efficient with their development resources. Not only does it reduce overall costs, it creates a way for code to be reused, ensuring that all future developments are equally cost-effective… We’ve seen accelerating impact from the pandemic as digital transformation initiatives move to the forefront of every company. strategy, and we expect the business to continue to grow in the 2023 market as companies start looking to reduce software development costs and turn to crowdbots for code reuse.
