SaaS start-up Zipy raises $2.8 mn in seed funding led by Blume, Together

Founded in 2020 by Vishalini Paliwal, an IIT Roorkee graduate & product engineering veteran, Zipy helps software teams to proactively identify, prioritise & debug critical customer issues in real time

Zipy, a software debugging and observability platform, has raised a seed round of $2.8 million led by Blume Ventures and operator-led venture capital firm Together Fund.

Founded in 2020 by Vishalini Paliwal, an IIT Roorkee graduate and product engineering veteran, Zipy enables software teams to proactively identify, prioritise and debug critical customer issues in real time by combining session replays, error monitoring and intelligent insights on a unified platform.

The start-up operates in a software-as-service model where customers are charged on the basis of the size of their teams who use the platform. As is the case with many SaaS start-ups, the platform also allows limited use for free of cost.

“The thing is that software developers do not like to be told what tools to use. Our aim is to grow through word-of-mouth as some engineers use the platform and refer it to others,” said Paliwal.

For slightly bigger teams and to avail of more features in the platform, companies can subscribe to Zipy for as low as $39 per month. The pricing jumps to $200-$500 a month if it is used by a mid-sized firm which requires more sophisticated configuration, and larger enterprise sized teams are offered tailor-made plans.

At present, Zipy only works for web browser based applications but plans to expand to mobile apps in the future. “While the Southeast Asia region and India have become massive mobile app markets, the US is still a major web browser geography,” explained Paliwal.

The company views its market opportunity to be as big as the 30 million developers worldwide which translates to $10 billion in value terms. “We are seeing good traction in the US, South America and Europe,” said Paliwal.

“Any bug has a huge impact on an organisation in terms of revenue loss, customer churn, and much more importantly loss of precious developer time in resolving that bug. We were amazed to see how Zipy can bring down the TTR (time to response) of a bug by 10X with a very unique privacy first approach,” said Sanjay Nath, Managing Partner of Blume Venture.

Headquartered in San Francisco and with an office in Pune, Zipy plans to use this round of funding to enhance the capabilities of the technology, hiring, marketing and sales.

“Zipy addresses a very significant pain point of bringing developers closer to their customers, where they can understand and solve customer issues quickly. We backed Zipy because they are focussed on solving a problem that every software team faces today and Zipy has the potential to be a category creator” says Girish Mathrubootham, CEO and Founder of Freshworks.