AppDynamics: Apple Watch's Indian connection

Jyoti Bansal-founded AppDynamics to provide technology for real-time monitoring of Apple Watch apps

When Apple launches its much-talked about wearable Apple Watch next month, the performance of the applications designed for the smart device will be monitored by a company founded by a person of Indian origin.

AppDynamics, a San Francisco-based company founded by Indian Institute of Technology Delhi alumnus Jyoti Bansal, has provided its application intelligence platform to monitor the performance of the apps designed for Apple Watch. The platform will also help in real-time monitoring and provide analytics support for the Watchkit extension that controls Apple Watch’s user interface and responses to user interactions.

Bansal holds 15 US patents on his name, founded AppDynamics in 2008 after working with various Silicon Valley-based start-ups including Wily Technologies, which provides application performance management, where he was the lead software architect.

AppDynamics, which plans to go for an initial public offering, has so far raised around $200 million in five rounds of funding including a growth round in July last year. In the growth round, the company raised $120 million in equity and debt. The round— led by Battery Ventures, ClearBridge Investments and Sands Capital, apart from existing investors Greylock Partners, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, and Institutional Venture Partners — had valued the company at $1 billion that time.

“AppDynamics gives full visibility into the performance of the WatchKit extension, which Apple calls ‘the brains of the operation.’ When the extension code is performing well, you know your app is performing well on the Apple Watch,” said Bhaskar Sunkara, chief technology officer and senior vice-president of product management, AppDynamics. “The AppDynamics Application Intelligence Platform provides a host of ways for application owners to see, measure, and respond to the behaviour of the user, the application, and the Apple Watch extension,” added Sunkara, a Bachelor of Computer Science and Engineering from Madras University and founding team member of AppDynamics.

With the tools available in the AppDynamics Application Intelligence Platform, developers and app owners will be able to monitor the performance of their Apple Watch-enabled apps and the WatchKit extension including app latency, crashes, stalls and errors, among others.

Apple Watch is expected to be available for preview from April 10 onwards in several countries before its commercial shipping later that month. In the first year of its launch, Apple plans to sell 15 million units of the smart watch, which is expected to be priced between $349 (Rs 21,800) and $17,000 (Rs 10.66 lakh) based on the variants.