ETtechLocofy.ai, a front-end development acceleration platform that uses artificial intelligence to convert designs to code, has raised $4.25 million in its second seed-stage round of funding led by TPG Capital-backed private equity firm Northstar Ventures.
Other participating investors included returning investors Golden Gate Ventures, Accel in India, Aviondor Group, founders and technology heads at other startups, among others, the company said in a statement.
The Singapore-based fully remote startup, with employees across India, Pakistan, Vietnam, Philippines and Canada, converts web and mobile app designs into several front-end coding languages, eliminating hundreds of hours of grunt work form frontend and fullstack developers.
It shot to fame in 2022 when it launched its beta in January and also closed a $3 million round of funding. So far, it has managed to raise $7.3 million in total.
Locofy.ai has had about 110,000 sign-ups from developers and designers across 195 countries at startups, enterprises, and freelance and student communities.
It currently converts Figma and Adobe XD designs into React, React Native, HTML-CSS, Gatsby and Next.js code using AI.
The new tranche of funds will boost its plans to simplify the design-to-code conversion significantly with AI while adding more integrations to the platform to seamlessly fit in the workflows, Locofy.ai said in its statement.
The platform is currently integrated with Storybook, Github, Netlify, Vercel and Snack, and plans on more of these partnerships going forward.
Apart from the fundraise, the company also announced a series of senior-level appointments.
Tien Nguyen, former chief technology officer of Teko and Wego, is set to join Locofy.ai as its vice president of engineering. Nick Jachowski, a former founder of Swat and AI advisor to startups, is set to join as head of AI, and Nguyen Kien, former director of engineering at Tiki, will join as head of engineering.
Locofy.ai’s product is currently completely free to use, with founders still in early-stage ideation of plans to monetise the product. Founders Honey Mittal and Sohaib Muhammad are first generation immigrants in Singapore from India and Pakistan, respectively.
Mittal and Muhammad previously worked together at flight search and booking app Wego.
“For us at Locofy.ai, it’s really word of mouth, community-based growth,” founder and CEO Mittal told ET in an interaction. “We don’t do any outbound. We don't do any demos for any client… It’s all self-service – users come to the platform and use the platform. We do a lot of content and a lot of documentation. We have a Slack community where people can get in touch with the founding team and ask us questions,” he said.
Founder and CTO Muhammad added, “We are not replacing front-end engineers. We’re giving them superpowers. We are giving them tools so they can build faster. The idea is to use one engineer instead of three engineers for front-end development.”
Other participating investors included returning investors Golden Gate Ventures, Accel in India, Aviondor Group, founders and technology heads at other startups, among others, the company said in a statement.
Individual investors in the round included Arash Ferdowsi, cofounder and chief technology officer of Dropbox, Nattu Adnan, cofounder and CTO of Lottiefiles, and leadership team members from the likes of Tinder, Zopim, Paysense and Betterhalf.ai.
The Singapore-based fully remote startup, with employees across India, Pakistan, Vietnam, Philippines and Canada, converts web and mobile app designs into several front-end coding languages, eliminating hundreds of hours of grunt work form frontend and fullstack developers.
It shot to fame in 2022 when it launched its beta in January and also closed a $3 million round of funding. So far, it has managed to raise $7.3 million in total.
Locofy.ai has had about 110,000 sign-ups from developers and designers across 195 countries at startups, enterprises, and freelance and student communities.
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It currently converts Figma and Adobe XD designs into React, React Native, HTML-CSS, Gatsby and Next.js code using AI.
The new tranche of funds will boost its plans to simplify the design-to-code conversion significantly with AI while adding more integrations to the platform to seamlessly fit in the workflows, Locofy.ai said in its statement.
The platform is currently integrated with Storybook, Github, Netlify, Vercel and Snack, and plans on more of these partnerships going forward.
Apart from the fundraise, the company also announced a series of senior-level appointments.
Tien Nguyen, former chief technology officer of Teko and Wego, is set to join Locofy.ai as its vice president of engineering. Nick Jachowski, a former founder of Swat and AI advisor to startups, is set to join as head of AI, and Nguyen Kien, former director of engineering at Tiki, will join as head of engineering.
Locofy.ai’s product is currently completely free to use, with founders still in early-stage ideation of plans to monetise the product. Founders Honey Mittal and Sohaib Muhammad are first generation immigrants in Singapore from India and Pakistan, respectively.
Mittal and Muhammad previously worked together at flight search and booking app Wego.
“For us at Locofy.ai, it’s really word of mouth, community-based growth,” founder and CEO Mittal told ET in an interaction. “We don’t do any outbound. We don't do any demos for any client… It’s all self-service – users come to the platform and use the platform. We do a lot of content and a lot of documentation. We have a Slack community where people can get in touch with the founding team and ask us questions,” he said.
Founder and CTO Muhammad added, “We are not replacing front-end engineers. We’re giving them superpowers. We are giving them tools so they can build faster. The idea is to use one engineer instead of three engineers for front-end development.”
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