Bootstrapping a Generative AI Venture Using Services: Abhinav Girdhar, Founder CEO of Appy Pie (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Ok, so you spun it out around $1 million ARR?

Abhinav Girdhar: That’s correct.

Sramana Mitra: So now that you’re at $1M ARR, has a shakeout happened in the market? Have some of the other smaller competitors started folding or consolidating? What’s the situation?

Abhinav Girdhar: Around the same time, Apple came up with this new guideline that if you are creating an app using any of the DIY platforms, we won’t allow you to publish it on Apple App Store. It was sort of a game changer for us.

Sramana Mitra: Oh, why was that?

Abhinav Girdhar: It was some random policy because too many apps were going live on App Store and then they wanted quality apps. Not every app that was built using DIY platforms was of that quality.

Sramana Mitra: Rubbish basically!

Abhinav Girdhar: So the Apple Developer team reached out to us and gave us a prelude that these are the changes that are about to happen and you would not be allowed to publish any apps. So, I think all the major players at that particular point were stopped from publishing apps on the App Store. It was a big blow to us , but we thought we’ll focus all our energy on Android only. We didn’t have any option back then.

We started appealing to Apple that what they were doing was not right. A lot of companies started reaching out to them. There were some established players in North America who got all of us in the no-code app building space together. We sent a Letter of Concern to Apple CEO Tim Cook through a US senator, but of course that did not have an impact because Apple was the largest company. They had reached the trillion dollar mark at that time.

Sramana Mitra: You were doing all this from Delhi, India?

Abhinav Girdhar: Correct.

Sramana Mitra: What happened next?

Abhinav Girdhar: Eventually around early 2021, they had a change of heart. They decided that they wanted to allow anybody who’s creating apps from Apple to publish it as well. So that was a game changer for us because most of these companies who were operating they did not see a business fit and a lot of them started shutting shop.

So on hindsight, I feel bad for them because a lot of these companies were not able to have any profitability because half of the platforms are gone; and in the US, it’s an iPhone-driven market. That hurt them badly, so a lot of companies shut shop that time.

Sramana Mitra: You’re talking about your competitors or your customers?

Abhinav Girdhar: Competitors

Sramana Mitra: So, did any of them survive other than yourselves?

Abhinav Girdhar: Of course, some of them did survive. There were DIY platforms like Business Apps.

Sramana Mitra: I remember Business Apps.

Abhinav Girdhar: So we started getting a lot of customers because all these different DIY platforms were shutting shop. We thought it’s a blessing in disguise for us.

Sramana Mitra: It shook out the market.

Abhinav Girdhar: Our business started booming pretty rapidly. Then in 2022, Covid happened.

Sramana Mitra: No, Covid happened in 2020.

Abhinav Girdhar: The Apple thing happened in 2019. Then in 2020, Covid happened. Then we got a lot of tailwinds coming in. Then the business just took off.

Sramana Mitra: Did you change the pricing?

Abhinav Girdhar: We’ve done several iterations in the pricing.

This segment is part 4 in the series : Bootstrapping a Generative AI Venture Using Services: Abhinav Girdhar, Founder CEO of Appy Pie
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