HackerEarth eyes 60% revenue from US
HackerEarth, the Bengalurubased software innovation provider, and among the leading hackathon organisers in India, plans to grow their US business aggressively from 2019. While the company has clients and developers globally, the US consists more than a third of the revenue stream. It plans to ramp it up to 60 per cent of the total share.
The firm works on a developer-community model. Enterprise clients looking for innovative solutions pay annual fees to access HackerEarth's community. The company also organises Hackathons, where enterprises scout for talent and ideas.
"While we have plans to expand globally, we don't want to spread too thin at this point. We have been organising hackathons for US clients for some time, and believe it is a good time to set up operations in the country. We will build the developer community similar to how we expanded in India. We have worked with US-based NGOs and University of California, Berkeley already," said Sachin Gupta, CEO and cofounder HackerEarth.
While Gupta will focus on the US operations with a head office in San Francisco, CTO and co-founder Vivek Prakash will continue to expand India base. Founded in 2012, the firm reivented hackathons in 2015, and converted them into software-as-a-service (SaaS) offering. It allowed businesses to crowdsource innovation both internally, and also from an open community of developers.
In the last three years, the number of hackathons it has organised has increased 6x, with over 400 events already in 2018. One of their chief strategies to attract talent has been to partner with aspirational enterprises such as Adobe, and other fintech companies.
It has raised $5 million till date, and count Prime Venture Partners, GSF Accelerator, DHI Group among their investors.
"We aim to turn cash-flow positive in 2019, having logged Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (Ebitda) positive for the third quarter in 2018. Since the last couple of years, hackathons are being used by large organisations to rapidly prototype and crowd-source ideas from a large talent pool," said Prakash.
In Q4, it expects to increase its revenue by another 25 per cent, and report a second straight quarter of positive Ebitda. It is targeting aggressive growth next year, with an aim to grow 3x by the end of it. The company counts Amazon, Titan, Honeywell, Future group, SBI, Wells Fargo, KONE and Makemytrip, among others, in its client list.
HackerEarth aims to have more than 3.5 million developers on its platform, and add more users from the US in 2019.