Exclusive: AppBrowzer secures $500K from Deepak Gurnani, others

Bangalore-based Roid Technologies Pvt Ltd, which operates instant mobile app store AppBrowzer, has raised $500,000 led by Deepak Gurnani, a member of Singapore Angel Network, Sunny Gurnani, co-founder and chief executive of the startup told VCCircle. A group of angel investors also participated in the round.

Deepak, a distributor and producer of Indian movies, has invested in about a dozen startups across the globe. This is his maiden startup investment in India.

A significant amount of the capital was invested in building and launching the product, and forming a team, Sunny said. "We haven't done any marketing so far. Now, the focus will be on expanding the team and marketing the product to initiate good traction," he added.

AppBrowzer helps users search, discover and use various apps without any download or installation.

The startup was founded by Sunny along with Venkatesh Rao in 2015. Sunny has previously founded DealsMix, an Australian daily deals aggregator and worked with Aquion, a software sales, marketing and services company in Sydney. Rao worked with IT infrastructure solutions and services company Locuz Enterprise Solutions before launching AppBrowzer.

AppBrowzer did a soft launch of its business-to-consumer (B2C) offering, a marketplace of mobile applications, last month. The platform houses around 150 popular apps from various segments, including shopping (Flipkart, Amazon), news (CNN, TechCrunch), and education (Khan Academy) where users can instantly access any of these apps, close, and move on to another – all in the application - without needing to download or install them separately. It helps users save storage space on their mobile devices and data costs used for installing and updating the apps.

The Android app has witnessed about 250 downloads so far.

The company is also working on a business-to-business (B2B) platform where developers and businesses can build and host their own instant apps. AppBrowzer plans to release its instant App SDK and app builder platform shortly after the B2C platform gains a significant amount of traction. "We are looking to achieve at least 25,000 downloads before launching our B2B platform," Sunny said.

Existing Android and iOS apps would also be able to build instant apps from available resources on the platform.

"We have taken and merged the best bits of web and native app technologies to create this platform. When a developer builds an app, it's a web app but that gives a native experience to the users. We have made the process of making apps much easier where a developer can build an instant app in less than a day or two," Sunny said.

It competes with Tapzo, which was earlier known as Helpchat, a personal assistant platform. While Tapzo ties up with companies like Uber, Ola, Freecharge, Zomato and Swiggy to integrate their APIs to build apps within the platform, AppBrowzer keeps the builder platform open for developers and businesses to build and host their apps on the platform.

The soon-to-be-launched B2B platform is its main monetisation window, although the B2C platform would contribute to a smaller portion of its revenues, primarily from advertisements and sponsored apps.