Led by serial entrepreneur Sachin Dev Duggal Builder.ai is a software platform that enables its customers to build, run and scale ideas. As of 2019, Builder has over 500 clients globally and an approximate annual revenue of $43M.
In a candid conversation with Express Computer’s Gairika Mitra, the founder spills the beans on how technology has heralded a massive upswing in businesses.
Edited excerpts:
How do you think this sector is going to upsurge in the near future? India has established approximately 48 million small businesses over the past decade, nearly double the number of the US. However, unlike the US, most businesses in India are hesitant to invest in digital transformation due to a lack of tech expertise, resources or both. For a country like India, that is the fastest-growing trillion-dollar economy in the world and the fifth-largest overall, a necessary shift to stay competitive is the democratisation of software development so that ideas can transcend borders and compete in the global market. Currently, the Indian app economy is dependent on 3 types of monetisation.
These include app store purchases, in-app advertising, as well as mobile commerce. Indians are now spending over three hours per day on their mobile devices and a significant percentage of this is spent on apps availing services – ordering food, planning travel, playing games and hailing rides. The Digital India initiative, along with other advances made by the government since 2014 has led to a stupendous growth in the digital payments market as well, thanks to the symbiotic influence between mobile wallets and online shopping. India’s growing digital population and rapidly changing consumption patterns are a sign to watch out for. We are only getting started!
What is the latest mode of technology that you are catering to? As I just explained, our human-assisted AI platform helps entrepreneurs and enterprises build, run and scale tailor-made software. Builder Studio lets our customers build mobile apps, websites and wearables. We also offer aftercare, so software never goes out of date, and cloud capacity from all the big providers. But our latest launch is called The Studio Store, a new range of pre-packaged apps – beginning with e- commerce and delivery – designed to bring businesses online faster and at a fraction of the cost of building from scratch. As COVID-19 heavily impacts small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), we are helping all SMBs build their e-commerce or local delivery app with The Studio Store and provide the first three months of live service for free.
The first apps will serve the specific needs of businesses across e-commerce and delivery – such as flower shops, grocery stores and clothiers – and can be delivered to a customer in less than eight weeks. The e-commerce app makes selling to an ever-mobile customer effortless, and retailers can showcase their goods with a scrollable carousel and offer a wide range of secure payment methods. The app includes features that will handle the soup to nuts of most e-commerce experiences, the aftercare to keep the app working and the cloud needed to run the app and scale the business. This launch is part of Builder.ai’s larger mission to make the process of building a digital future more accessible, cost effective and efficient.
How important do you think is it for people to rely on technology? Are there any major follies per se? No matter the nature of the business, succeeding means staying ahead of the competition at all times. In this increasingly digital age, where an average person spends over three hours on their mobile phones each day, true business potential lies in digital. Customers now prefer to communicate with businesses via online and digital channels – whether it’s through an app or a website. However, while businesses recognise this, traditionally a lack of skills or technical knowledge has been a barrier. At Builder, we make it as easy and as cost effective as possible for these businesses to amplify their digital presence.
Coming to the financial perspective, are you a bootstrapped venture? If not, kindly elucidate on the nature and amount of funding raised. We raised a series A funding round of $29.5m in November 2018, one of Europe’s largest ever series A led by Lakestar and Jungle Ventures, with participation from SoftBank’s DeepCore.
What are your immediate and longterm milestones? At an organisational level, we employed approximately 80 people in the last quarter of 2018 and are now around the 275 globally. We have grown approximately 2.2 times in the last 12 months and will continue to grow. Builder.ai is going through an exciting phase where we are seeing quick yet strategic growth, supporting both active digital markets and those that are ripe for digital transformation. We are able to do this because we can transcend the traditional necessities of technical knowledge by introducing a transparent end-to-end process that caters to the entire life-cycle of an idea, thereby improving the efficiency of resources. We look forward to sustaining this growth by offering more enterprises the ability to bring their software ideas to life.
Lastly, any word of advice for the wannapreneurs? Keep your eye on the core goal throughout the journey. Builder was founded because we wanted to enable anyone to make a software idea into a reality without needing expertise in development and coding. Whatever happens from that point forward, whether it’s the launch of a new product or the securing of a new partnership, needs to support the initial value proposition of which the entire company was founded on. Don’t lose sight of it.