Google acquires enterprise app-building platform AppSheet

Technology giant Google’s cloud division has acquired Indian-origin founder Praveen Sheshadri’s enterprise app-building platform AppSheet. The companies did not disclose the value of the deal or the nature of the transaction.

Seattle-based AppSheet was founded by IIT Madras alumnus Sheshadri in 2012 and is a low-code or no-code app development platform for employees of large enterprises. The company, whose product has been available for five years, has raised around $18 million so far at about $60 million valuation, according to multiple reports.

“The demand for faster processes and automation requires more business applications to be built with greater speed and efficiency. This acquisition helps enterprises empower millions of citizen developers to easily create and extend applications, without needing professional coding skills,” Amit Zavery, vice president for business applications platform at Google Cloud, said.

AppSheet’s services will continue to be available and have deeper integration with Google Cloud, Shehadri said in a company blog post, announcing the acquisition. The whole (AppSheet) team will join Google Cloud, he said.

Addressing concerns of the platform’s availability across other platforms and the cloud, the company said that it will continue to support and improve its integrations with other cloud-hosted data sources such as Microsoft Office 365, Salesforce, Dropbox, and databases hosted in other clouds apart from its apps running on Apple’s iOS software platform and on other web browsers, apart from Chrome.

“We want to ‘democratise’ app development by enabling as many people as possible to build and distribute applications without writing a line of code. That continues to be our mission and it aligns well with Google Cloud’s strategy to re-envision digital transformation with a business user-centric application platform,” Sheshadri said on the company’s blog.

He said that AppSheet sees great potential to leverage and integrate with many of Google’s platforms like G Suite and Android to improve the functionality, scale and performance of the company’s no-code platform.

“AppSheet’s ability to power a range of applications and personalised reporting, combined with Google Cloud’s deep expertise in key verticals, will further enable digital transformation across industries like financial services, manufacturing, retail, healthcare, communication, and media and entertainment,” Zavery said.