Image Credit: ministryoftesting.com , investopedia.com
The Mumbai-based Browserstack has raised $200 million in a fundraising round which included prominent investors like Mary Meeker’s Bond and Insight Partners. Accel, an existing investor, also participated in the fund-raise. After the capital infusion, the cloud web and mobile testing platform is valued at $4 billion, becoming among the most valued Indian start-ups in the software-as-a-service (SaaS) sector.
Browserstack has revealed that it will be using the capital raised to increase its manpower and infrastructure. It aims to take advantage of the growing demand for cloud-based testing in view of the Coronavirus pandemic. The testing platform will double the size of its team over the course of the next 18 months. The proceeds from the fundraiser will also be used to acquire new companies which would enable Browserstack to enter new segments of the market.
According to Browserstack’s co-founder Nakul Agarwal, the company went for the latest fundraiser to benchmark its business. “We want to be the testing infrastructure of the Internet and to do this we need to scale our operations quickly both in terms of people and infrastructure,” he explained.
Browserstack claims that it has doubled its team from 300 to 800 employees in the past two years and wants to expand further to 1,000 employees by the end of the year. It has a large customer base of over 50,000 companies including Google, Amazon, Twitter and Ikea which use its testing services.
Browserstack is among the seven Indian start-ups in the SaaS sector to have reached the unicorn stage i.e., achieving a valuation of more than $1 billion.
Agarwal says that becoming public is the long term goal of Browserstack. However, in the short run, the company aspires to expand its market share to 50% and become the world’s largest testing platform. He also aims to go beyond web and mobile testing into domains like wearables, Smart TVs and other devices connected to the internet.