Crowdbotics raises $40M to assist developers in creating apps using modular code

The $40 million Series B round was led by NEA and included Homebrew, JSV, Harrison Metal, and Cooley. Crowdbotics is a software development platform with a library of prebuilt app architectures. The additional funding will be used to increase Crowdbotics’ enterprise presence, grow the company’s product line, and invest in growing its current customer base, CEO Anand Kulkarni told TechCrunch in an email interview.

Following the launch of LeadGenius, a tool that used AI to comb the web and find sales leads, Kulkarni founded Crowdbotics in 2017. With Crowdbotics, he aimed to streamline the process of planning and deploying software by building a catalog of reusable programming modules.

Customers can build applications using techniques and reusable modules of code that have previously worked, and focus custom engineering efforts just on the parts of their application that are truly unique, according to Kulkarni, 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. “Using our planning engine, which is supported by a growing archive of historical data about how applications are created, customers specify custom software products. Customers can use Crowdbotics to translate these specifications into code, typically in React, React Native, and Django, and then deploy applications into online, offline, or on-premise environments with staging and production workflows.

Kulkarni views Crowdbotics as a kind of ERP for the development of software. Enterprise resource planning, or ERP, is a class of system that aids businesses in managing and automating key business procedures. Instead of managing business processes, Crowdbotics manages the development processes, keeping the development of apps organized and, hopefully, on schedule.

The concept is superficially similar to DhiWise, which transforms visual app elements into structured, readable, and modular code that can then be expanded upon for scalability. Potential competitors include Appsmith, which provides internal development teams with an open source platform to create custom apps, as well as WorkOS and Onymos, which enable app developers to incorporate enterprise features like single sign-on (SSO) and directory synchronization.

Kulkarni asserted, “We’re replacing last-generation app-building tools like Microsoft PowerApps and Mendix.” Regardless of the number of users, Crowdbotics bases its pricing on the number of features in the application. Additionally, it enables CIOs to establish and enforce their own standards for development and security while enabling developers to work directly in open source software development frameworks like React Native and Django.

Most businesses using Crowdbotics, according to Kulkarni, organize their own organization’s reusable code and data components into a private module library on the platform. These private module libraries allow developers to quickly create their own IT-approved feature libraries that can be maintained and used in various organizational contexts. Alternatively, they can pay a monthly subscription fee for hosting, infrastructure, maintenance, monitoring, and other services and hire project managers and developers from the Crowdbotics gig marketplace.

Customers can quickly build stable apps or have applications built to their specifications by reusing standardized, well-supported architectures and quickly connecting modules of interoperable code, according to Kulkarni. The benefits to the CTO, CIO, and other IT department heads directly affect their performance and the bottom line of their departments by reducing development time and budget, facilitating code reuse at scale, and adhering to an organization’s own standards.

There may have been a little exaggeration there. However, Crowdbotics, which has received over $68 million in funding to date, has unquestionably succeeded in attracting customers. The U.S. Air Force, which is using Crowdbotics to create flight analysis and training tools, is the startup’s largest customer, with over 500, according to its claims. According to Kulkarni, Crowdbotics’ revenue has increased threefold annually over the past three years, and the company’s 90-person workforce is expected to double by the end of 2023.

The changing economic landscape currently hangs over most businesses, so preventing capital waste will be a top priority. By enabling businesses to use their development resources more strategically and effectively, Crowdbotics is in a position to assist, according to Kulkarni. “Not only does it lower overall costs and overhead, but it also paves the way for code reuse, guaranteeing that all subsequent development will have the same cost efficiencies,” the author writes. The pandemic’s effects have been intensifying as digital transformation initiatives have taken center stage in every company’s strategy, and we anticipate that the market will continue to expand even in 2023 as more businesses start to use code reuse to cut costs associated with software development and turn to crowdbots.