Sofy, a startup developing a testing platform for mobile app developers that it claims is used by Microsoft, today closed a $7.75 million startup round, bringing the total capital raised to $9.5 million. Voyager Capital led the tranche with participation from PSL Ventures, GTMFund and Revolution, providing funds that CEO Syed Hamid said will be used to support Sof’s overall growth and R&D.
Sofy was co-launched in 2016 by Hamid, Hyder Ali and Usman Zubair. Before that, Syed was a technical leader at Microsoft for nearly two decades. Ali also spent most of his career at Microsoft, while Zubair—another Microsoft veteran—manages several startups in addition to Sofy, including Enfoundery, a tech consultancy for entrepreneurs.
“Software testing hasn’t changed in the last 40 years. It’s still done manually with significant creation and maintenance costs,” Hamid told businesstraverse.com in an email interview. “The time is right with advances in machine learning and AI to move towards a modern no-code testing process and intelligent automation.”
Sofy validates changes to app code directly from existing development environments. Sofy provides insights that highlight issues in the code and attempts to account for different devices and operating systems that the code can run on, capturing metrics such as speed and responsiveness, as well as vulnerability to cyber-attacks.
Image Credits: Sofy
“We have a dataset of over 17,000 publicly available mobile apps to enhance our no-code platform and improve application resiliency and efficiency. We are able to perform automation on thousands of different device arrays,” said Hamid.
Developers may object to Sofy’s analytics capabilities, which attempt to quantify the dev’s “performance and productivity.” But Hamid touts them as a net asset, as they can lead to faster release cycles in his eyes.
“There are [major] benefits for the C-suite… By releasing apps faster, it has an organizational impact, significantly reducing engineering costs,” said Hamid. “Sofy helps organizations deliver higher quality apps and more innovation, giving their customers a better experience.”
Sofy is up against companies like BrowserStack, which offers a similar testing platform for apps. Authenticate and Waldo also compete in space. But Sofy will try to stay ahead of the competition with new features, Hamid says, including the ability to test apps for augmented and virtual reality peripherals.
Sofy’s current customer base is 45 companies, although Hamid notes that teams of about 2,500 companies use the service. The startup plans to expand its workforce from 35 to 75 employees by the end of the year.