Space shuttle to self-driving cars: LambdaTest wants to test every tech

LambdaTest wants to test not just software, but every kind of technology, including the next space shuttle and self-driving cars

With over two million application developers executing software tests on its platforms, LambdaTest, a Noida-based startup, has reduced the software testing time to half. But the biggest validation for its team came when Satya Nadella compared LambdaTest to Kubernetes, an open-source system for automating deployment, scaling, and management of containerised applications.

“LambdaTest is doing for test automation what Kubernetes did for container orchestration — creating that next level of efficiency around test automation, so that people can focus on testing versus test orchestration,” the Microsoft chairman and CEO said earlier this year, while addressing developers and tech leaders in Bengaluru.

His words have fired up the team at LambdaTest, which started its journey in 2017. “Recognition from a highly respected industry leader like Satya was great validation of our six years of hard work, and reaffirmed our commitment to empowering testers with the right tools that will enable them to release quality products faster,” says Mayank Bhola (pictured), co-founder and product head at LambdaTest.

He told Business Standard that the company is aiming to become a provider of testing infrastructure for all kinds of technologies, not just for software applications. 

“Tomorrow even Nasa may use LambdaTest. We want to provide that testing infrastructure. It does not have to stop at software testing — it could be Tesla’s new self-driving car, or the new SpaceX shuttle. We want to reach a stage where, when testing comes to mind, LambdaTest is the word that you get,” he said.

In six years the firm has completed over 100 million software tests. The user base is expanding by 100 per cent each year. More developers are getting attracted to the platform, even as they shift to a low-code, no-code development environment. 

“This is the best time, because the place that we are at allows us to integrate with all the tools in the ecosystem. As you can see, low code is removing the barrier for anybody to generate the programme. GitHub or other low-code, no-code solutions are generating more test cases, and we enable developers to run all the test cases at the fastest speed,” explains Bhola. 

The company targets a hundred-fold growth in the number of tests being executed on the platform. “We want to reach 10 billion test cases in a year. We want to be pioneers who are defining testing methodology for the world.” 

Software testing is a complex process of verifying that a software product or application does what it is supposed to do. It amounts to a significant part of the software development lifecycle and involves preventing bugs, reducing development costs and improving performance. LambdaTest helps developers execute their test cases at scale without having to manage the pipeline.

Developers can test their websites and software on more than 3,000 operating systems and browser combinations. The company entered test orchestration with HyperExecute, a new platform. It arranges the automated tests into a sequence, to allow better monitoring and execution of tests.

“The platform is adding up to 150 per cent efficiency to the process of testing. The developers are running twice the number of test cases and getting feedback half of the time,” says Bhola.

Major global enterprises, including Microsoft, Capgemini, Deloitte and CNBC, now rely on LambdaTest’s solutions. 

“Take any big enterprise. The biggest challenge is that they have so many moving parts that testing all of them on a single platform has always been challenging. Our interest always is to unlock customers where nobody else can help them further. This is where we start going into the problem,” Bhola says.

As part of its unified test execution platform, the firm provides a real device testing cloud, which eliminates the need for an internal device library and reduces operational costs in testing. It also offers a visual testing platform that can compare images from pixel to pixel, to find out visual bugs, an in-house analytics platform, and a test intelligence platform that adds AI-based capabilities to all the offerings. 

“We have observed that testing was never the core region of interest of any organisation. Nobody wants to iterate too much on technology to help accelerate their testing, although this is highly important, because every shop today is a software shop. Even though your velocity of (software) release is so important, nobody wants to invest much into the pipeline that is leading them to develop faster,” says Bhola. 

This hyper-focus on helping developers to make the best software has led the world’s largest VCs to back LambdaTest. The company has so far raised $70 million, the latest being $45 million in Series C rounds last year, led by Premji Invest. It also counts VCs like Sequoia Capital India, Blume Ventures, Telstra Ventures and Leo Capital among its investors.