Tuesday, August 18, 2015

STARTUP SPECIAL ....................BOOTSTRAP CHAMP - As VCs Rush in, a Few Brave Startups Dare to Decline

BOOTSTRAP CHAMP - As VCs Rush in, a Few Brave Startups Dare to Decline


No venture funding yet, but BrowserStack has cracked the code to profitability

...and the (ET) award goes to
Ritesh Arora & Nakul Aggarwal BrowserStack
Not every entrepreneur gets it right the first time, or the second, or the third. Ritesh Arora and Nakul Aggarwal, who were classmates at the Indian Institute of TechnologyBombay, struck gold with their fourth company, BrowserStack, a maker of developer tools.
Launched in 2011, BrowserStack has gained wide acceptance in the web development community . It has 30,000 customers and at least 5.2 lakh registered developers in more than 135 countries.
Customers include Microsoft, Xerox, Citrix, Github, eBay, Barclays, Adobe and Visa.
The Mumbai-based company helps developers visualize what their code will look like and how it will perform across browsers and operating systems.
A code has to work across multiple browsers--Windows' Inter net Explorer, Apple's Safari, and Google's Chrome. Each browser has its nuances and the behavior of code varies on different platforms.
Arora, 31, said he turns down at least one funding offer every month from overseas venture capital investors.
“We've run this business as a highly profitable business since the beginning, so we never needed venture capital,“ he said, adding, “We are happy, very happy for having won the award.“
Like with most enterprise startups, the idea for BrowserStack was born out of the trouble the founders faced while writing code for different environments. Arora was working on a consulting project at his third company, Binary Life Technologies, and found this to be a big peeve.
“I have a Mac (Macintosh) and I was working on projects meant for Internet Explorer. It was a real problem.“ BrowserStack, which employs 70 people, has breached the double-digit million mark in revenue and expects growth to increase by 100% in two years. It plans to open offices in Europe and the United States, its largest market.
“Our next big opportunity is in mobile and testing automation,“ Arora said.
Many large companies tackle the problem addressed by BrowserStack by developing tools in-house, a drain on their time and resources. When Arora launched his product, freelance developers lapped up his product.
“Developers hate advertisements.They like the product to do the talking,“ said Arora, who has no background in marketing and swears by his experience at his previous startups.
Jeff Seibert, director of mobile platform at Twitter, came on board as an adviser when he noticed the market BrowerStack was addressing.
“Developer tools, particularly testing tools, are a challenging business to tackle. The field lacks the sex appeal of consumer products and the high visibility of classic enterprise software but the opportunity is immense,“ Seibert said in an earlier interview.
“Over my career, one of the key lessons I've learned is to always be intentional--to be thoughtful and strategic with each and every business decision in order to maximise learning, and maximise the chance of success. Ritesh and Nakul exhibit this in spades.“
ET14AUG15


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