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Harness, which offers a suite of software engineering tools to companies, is valued at $3.7 billion and counts investors like Norwest Venture Partners, JPMorgan, Menlo Ventures and Battery Ventures, among others.
Traceable AI, which offers products to protect software codes from cyberattacks, has picked up $150 million in total funding from the likes of SoftBank Vision Fund and Tiger Global Management.
The teams for Harness and Traceable – both of which are unicorns – are spread across Bengaluru, Delhi-NCR and Hyderabad.
From the sale of AppDynamics to Cisco, which took place just a day before the startup was set to go public, Bansal snagged around $500 million.
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The same year, he founded Harness. Traceable was incorporated in 2019.“We are based in Silicon Valley and cater mostly to the US market but a majority of our research and development happens in India… The engineering talent here is top class now,” Bansal said, adding that much has changed over the past decade in terms of India’s software developer talent with the rise of large Indian consumer internet startups.
“Perhaps ten years ago, some engineering skills were missing here because people didn’t have experience around user interfaces, user experience design…or around product management and large-scale software systems… But people have learnt that now… Building consumer applications like Flipkart and others has removed that skill gap,” he said.
Startup ecosystem correction
Bansal cofounded Silicon Valley-based VC firm Unusual Ventures, which backs software startups.
He thinks the correction that happened post the boom during the go-go period of 2021 and early 2022 went too far.
The increase in interest rates by the US central bank after years of being in a zero-interest-rate regime caused a global slowdown in the tech ecosystem, he said. During this period, large tech firms laid off employees in massive numbers while risk capital investors took their feet off the gas pedal.
“I think some of the correction was needed…but we started to get a bit into the overcorrection mode. Growing at all costs is unhealthy… But the other part is also unhealthy, which is to say that don’t grow,” Bansal said. “Now, we’re coming back to a healthier area. Valuations are becoming more reasonable.”
In India, startup funding closed in on the $11 billion mark in 2024, compared with $9.6 billion last year, ET reported on December 24, citing Venture Intelligence data. For context, startups in the country raised $24 billion in 2022 while in 2021, they had mopped up $36 billion.
Locally, Bansal has made personal investments in software startups such as WestBridge Capital-backed LeadSquared and SoftBank-backed Mindtickle.
AI impact
“I don’t believe AI will take away software developer jobs…but it will enhance productivity. A lot of people are focused on how to use AI to write code… Coding will become easier. But what happens after coding is where our focus is…making sure the code is secure, it is deployed, tested,” Bansal said.
He also pointed out the potential threat from AI arising out of bad actors.
“You can build a lot of algorithms to solve software problems…but the biggest challenge is going to be bad actors using AI to attack systems,” he said. “And they will be able to do it in a much more sophisticated way than it is possible now. So, to fight them…you need to have AI as well. The next generation of cybersecurity will be driven by AI.
ET had reported earlier that advancements in artificial intelligence and a gap in skilled workforce is making cyberattacks more threatening.
AppDynamics, founded in 2008, helped clients monitor and fix faults and bugs from their websites and apps.
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