‘We have developed applications that are in the top 10 category in the Android market’

Developing parallelly and contributing to the ecommerce industry are the mobile and enterprise apps and gaming industries. Amongst these, founded in 2011, AppStudioz is an emerging mobile app and game development company in India, which is also foraying into wearable computing.

In a short span of 21 months AppStudioz has successfully created more than 750+ mobile apps for iPhone/iPad, Android, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, etc. Amongst its key clients are Times Group, ESPN, Coca-Cola, JK Tyres and e-commerce giants like deals&you, fashion&you, etc.

Dataquest recently spoke to Saurabh Singh, the CEO & founder of AppStudioz, heading a team of 200+ people whom he calls "geniuses" in innovation. Singh serves on the Advisory board of a mobile product company "Appbulous" and is also the co-founder of AwakIND, a non-profit initiative. His well grounded marketing skills and extensive business strategies have helped AppStudioz successfully generate a million-dollar revenue in its first 12 months of the business under his leadership. Excerpts

How has AppStudioz done since inception?

We are 200+ in strength in just 21 months of existence, which easily puts us under the list of the fastest growing technology companies worldwide. We have developed over 750+ successful mobile apps and doubled our strength in every 2nd quarter.

We touched revenue of $1 mn in our first year and are close to a $2 mn turnover this year. We have doubled our revenue and increased the team size exponentially. In 2012, we expanded our base to UK and Australia. AppStudioz has now served in over 25 countries and has clientele worldwide.

What avenues do you target?

Among many, we have the expertise in consumer apps, enterprise apps, healthcare apps, navigation apps, media apps and many more. We have also tapped the new trending markets like Augmented Reality and 3D gaming.

 

Appstudioz has had remarkable success in the Appstore and Google Play Store. We have developed applications that have had over 1 mn downloads and are in the top 10 category in the Android market. We also have developed an application that is in the top 5 productivity apps in the US AppStore along with an app that is competing with "Google Drive App" in Japanese Appstore under the top 5 category. There are many such success stories that AppStudioz have created for its clients in the past few months.

Gaming is an essential part of the mobile industry and AppStudioz has ventured into mobile gaming in early 2012; till today we have developed over 75+ mobile games and developed good expertise in 3D and 2D gaming.

What is the skillset that you look for?

We have tapped a new market and are taking a leap ahead with the best and experienced talent in the mobile industry across India. In the past year there have been 5 hiring drives including 2 pool campus drives where Appstudioz hired over top 70 talents from tier 2 colleges.

Our company is dependent on innovation and creativity. We keep refurbishing the UI and how an app should like and interact. Getting designers is a problem, we make a lot of investments in them-18-20 people in innovation and several in design, user experience, etc.

How do your clients manage and assess the innovations?

Lot of our clients have a huge planning for this. We develop the mobile apps with IPR/copyrights. In the first phase, these are given to the client with say, 10 features. If they find it fine, new features are then added in the next phase. So, repeat biz is good. Clients do not ask us to innovate for monetary purposes but want us to capture wider user base, repeat and returning users etc.

 

Can you cite some specific apps that you have developed?

Some of our notable apps developed by us for various platforms are:

Crowdstream is a mobile event network that connects artists directly with fans at events.

offerBeam's an iPhone GPS based app that revolutionizes the way you shop by sending relevant offers right to your fingertips. You can check out offers available within 50 mile radius, get directions to participating retailers, as well as share offers via Facebook, Twitter and emails. The Cookoo watch is a Bluetooth smart watch, and is the world's first designer watch that combines an analog movement with a digital display that connects the iPhone 5 and iPhone 4S. It does not even need to be recharged. Style Match lets you match the clothing style on yourself and choose the best attire. It provides the facility to choose best outfits and order them online by making the payment via eBay.

ESPN covers the ESPN F1 season that too completely free! The app includes all the GPS information, classification of pilots, news, photos, and races back-to-back in real time. My Safety Alert has been developed for iPhone, with this your family and friends can easily locate and track you in real time during any emergency or any stressful situation.

What are your future plans?

Aiming at the future of Mobile, Appstudioz is now focusing on wearable computing, which are miniature electronic devices that are worn by the bearer under, with or on top of clothing. We have developed mobile apps that allow a watch to communicate with the phone and receive notifications and messages. Along with this the technical team at AppStudioz is now researching on developing an App, which can interact with the newly launched Google Goggles. Having developed a few products in this sector already, we are now very confident that we are the only company in India developing such interactive Apps and products. We are testing the prototype abroad and will be doing so in India too.