Testing seems an un-sexy support function. It is usually done by services giants like Infosys / Wipro. A “cool” tech startup doing “uncool” testing is a paradox. BrowserStack seems dead as a concept, let alone be a rising star

But Browsing further reveals India’s largest SaaS unicorn

BrowserStack’s founders Ritesh and Nakul started as developers. In 2008, the duo were trying to build software. Their initial projects failed

By 2011, they were consulting and building websites

Websites needed to be tested across browsers. It was painful. Internet Explorer was dominant. Indian internet penetration was 10%. Despite the challenges, the two wanted to build

BrowserStack was born as a free dev tool to test websites on browsers

Immediately, the product exploded. Developers loved it, clamoring to pay. B soon reached $20K monthly rev. It was the perfect time to go to VCs. But the capital conscious duo did an unusual thing

They decide to bootstrap, not for a few months, but years

By 2016, software had changed dramatically. Chrome was #1, IE was dead. Apps/software was exploding. Products needed to be shipped. Testing became critical, not support. B had reached $20M revenue, profitable.

A $40Bn testing market was for the taking

To do so, B raised a monster $50M first round. They continued focusing on developer love. The strong community became a moat. B spent 0 on marketing. It kept growing, widening the product scope

In 2020, B acquired Percy to help with visual testing

From browser testing, B now did app testing. MSFT, Twitter, Expedia, were customers. By 2021, it had 750+ employees, 50K+ customers and 4MM+ developers

In Jul 21, they raised $200M at $4B, giving up just 5% of the company

If software will eat the world, B will keep its appetite going. As B crossed a $100M+ run-rate, it was a truly global company building from India.