SaaS startup BrowserStack acquires US firm Percy to add visual testing capabilities

BrowserStack, which operates an eponymous web and mobile application testing platform, has acquired San Francisco, California-based visual testing and review platform Percy.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

With the acquisition, developers and quality assurance teams can access Percy to run visual, manual and automated functional tests on BrowserStack’s infrastructure and ship high-quality software at speed, the company said in a statement. 

Percy, set up in 2015, automates visual testing by capturing screenshots, comparing them against the baseline and highlighting visual changes.

“This acquisition moves us closer to our vision of becoming the testing infrastructure of the internet,” Ritesh Arora, co-founder and CEO of BrowserStack, said. “As we expand the capabilities of our platform, developers can rely on BrowserStack for all their testing needs and focus on doing what they do best — creating amazing experiences,” he added.

Arora founded Mumbai and San Francisco-based BrowserStack in 2011 with fellow IIT Bombay alumnus Nakul Aggarwal. They have also co-founded startups such as QuarkRank and Downcase.

Backed by venture capital firm Accel, the software testing platform claims to power over two million tests every day across 15 global data centres. The company provides its 25,000 clients, including Microsoft, Twitter, Barclays and Expedia, access to more than 2,000 real mobile devices and scalable cloud infrastructure.

BrowserStack last raised capital in a $50 million Series A funding round from Accel in January 2018. As part of that investment, Accel partner Ryan Sweeney joined BrowserStack’s board of directors.

Earlier today, SaaS unicorn Freshworks also acquired Singapore-based cloud management platform Flint, which helps its clients to integrate different cloud services and accelerate their digital transformation.