Kobiton Receives $5.2M

The round was led by BIP Capital (with Dan Drechsel joining the Board of Directors), with support from Kobiton seed investors KMS Technology and Kinetic Ventures, and Jon Hallett (Executive Chairman of BetterCloud and a longtime Atlanta-area investor), Ken Walters (formerly president and COO of Infor and QASymphony board member) and Kevin Lee, CEO of Kobiton. Kobiton has raised over $8 million in total.

Kobiton launched in 2016 after being spun-out of KMS Technology's incubator, Upstar Labs, which previously founded software testing companies QASymphony (acquired by Tricentis) and Katalon (a leading test automation platform and recognized as a Gartner Peer Insights Customers' Choice). Kobiton's mobile app testing platform improves the quality of mobile apps resulting in better user experiences and improved app store ratings, by offering manual and automated testing on real devices, in the cloud or on-premise. Over 500 companies and 35,000 testers/developers have used Kobiton's platform to-date. Its customers include Cap Gemini, Frontier Airlines, GreenSky, Office Depot and Q2.

Kobiton will use the funds to expand its sales, marketing, customer support and product development efforts. In particular, the company is in the process of adding new "Record & Playback" capabilities to its platform. Today, building automated test scripts for mobile requires extensive coding knowledge, typically in a framework called Appium. Kobiton is introducing the ability for a user to record a script by interacting with an app as a user would, then intelligently play back that script on hundreds of devices to identify issues and anomalies that may negatively impact the user experience (UX). This functionality will help companies rapidly adopt mobile test automation at scale.

"We view the caliber of investors as a vote of confidence in our business, our team and our product," says Kobiton CEO Kevin Lee. "Having established ourselves as the leading real-device mobile testing platform, we're expanding our offering with Record & Playback, the first mobile scriptless automation capability, to help organizations make the jump to automation. This investment validates our momentum and accelerates go-to-market for our new AI scriptless Appium automation technology."

"Organizations are finding it challenging to adopt mobile test automation at scale," says Dan Drechsel, SVP at BIP Capital. "The unique requirements of utilizing real-devices, coupled with the complexity of developing test automation scripts, has allowed, up to now, only the most sophisticated organizations to tackle this challenge. Kobiton is truly transforming mobile test automation by leveraging its vast experience in real-device testing and adding AI-powered scriptless test automation technology to its platform."

About BIP Capital

BIP Capital is recognized as one of the most active and successful venture investors in the Southeast, serving entrepreneurs, investors and operators to grow the emerging company ecosystem. It applies experience and process to make investment decisions and operational recommendations, allowing its portfolio companies to achieve and stay on a glide path of growth. Areas of focus include Enterprise SaaS, Healthcare IT, Digital Media, Dev Tools and MarTech. For more information, visit www.bip-capital.com or follow BIP Capital on LinkedIn or Twitter @BIPCapital.

About Kobiton

Kobiton enables organizations to build better mobile experiences by testing on real-devices while leveraging the latest in Appium test automation for seamless test script creation. Kobiton is a powerful mobile device cloud that allows companies to manage the devices they own and access real public cloud devices for efficient, comprehensive test coverage. Simple to use, easy to access from anywhere, and highly flexible, Kobiton minimizes costs while increasing productivity, so businesses can get apps to market sooner. The mobile device cloud platform offers centralized testing history and insights to improve collaboration across teams; access to the most in-demand mobile devices to supplement existing inventory; significant cost savings; and easy integration with preferred IDEs and development tools. More info at www.kobiton.com.