Startup Circle: How is Esper providing full-stack solution for the enterprise Android lifecycle?

Esper is progressing leaps and bounds in the Android DevOps space which is the practice of delivering exceptional customer experiences with a toolchain for collaboration, visibility, and control throughout the device lifecycle. Esper’s platform helps them respond in real-time to device state changes - including the health and performance of apps, configurations, OS, firmware, and more. They are active in the sectors of education, healthcare, retail, logistics, and temperature – control etc.

With CiOL, the co-founder Shiv Sundar talks about the journey of the startup, it's future and the product offerings.

What is Esper about? Tell us about the team.

Esper was launched in November 2018 and it is the first full-stack solution for the enterprise Android lifecycle, including deploying devices, remotely monitoring and fixing devices, and managing apps, operating systems, and device settings. We, the founders, of Esper, saw a huge global need for tools that could manage Android dedicated devices, like mobile point-of-sale (mPoS), kiosks, digital signage, and employee tablets. Esper is also the first solution to consider the entire single-purpose device ecosystem - including Android and cloud developers, firmware, and hardware.

Collectively, our most senior leadership team has over 25 years of experience and 35 patents in embedded mobile security.

CEO and Co-Founder Yadhu Gopalan was previously Chief Architect of the Windows CE Operating System, and a Chief Architect and Systems Engineer for the Amazon FireOS, AWS, and Amazon Go. COO and Co-Founder Shiv Sundar has over 15 years of experience working with Operating Systems and Mobile Hardware Manufacturers in prior roles at Cyanogen, Microsoft, Huawei/Cyanogen, and Samsung. VP Customer Success Chris Stirrat and VP Technical Sales Keith Szot collectively offer 40 years of experience in Customer Support and Product Management roles at organizations like Microsoft, Motorola, and Symantec.

How did you come up with the idea?

The onset of digitisation in India, especially after the growth of smartphones and the rollout of Jio in 2016, led to an influx of enterprise device deployments. The increased need for interoperability and cost-effectiveness led to the emergence of Android as the enterprise platform of choice.

In 2017, I quit my job at Silicon Valley and took a one-way ticket to India. Seeing the plethora of Android devices and the scope for managing these devices, I was inspired to build something for India to bridge the gap of a management and security platform.

MDM has evolved and expanded to include related technologies in the past 5 years in addition to traditional MDM, vendors have started to offer kiosk software, unified endpoint management solutions (UEM), and mobile application management (MAM). But, none of these solutions is designed to remotely deploy and control fleets of 10,000 or 100,000 devices that are being used by customers, employees, students, or healthcare patients. Esper was built for the complexities and size of today’s massive, global Android fleets.

It is a simple, powerful platform for organizations to manage fast-growing Android fleets for unique use cases, such as self-serve customer payments, managing education tablets or healthcare screenings.

What are the products that you offer?

Esper offers a complete set of tools for the entire Android development and operations lifecycle. This includes Validated and Enhanced Android Devices; A Custom Android Operating System; A Complete Cloud Console for Android Deployment and Management; Developer Tools, including Open APIs, an SDK, and cloud test labs.

Our customers can use these solutions to automate Android device and app deployment at any scale, regardless of whether they’re managing 3,000 or 300,000 devices. Often, customers use our cloud console or developer tools to lock devices to kiosk mode to prevent personal usage and maintain a continuously secure state.

Esper Enhanced Android devices are shipped from leading global device manufacturers with our custom Android OS for better security and control throughout the product life cycle. Our custom OS enables advanced telemetry use cases and over-the-air firmware updates.

What is your business/market growth?

There’s been a lot of attention on Esper’s growth, resulting in an influx of leads from large organizations in India, APAC, and Worldwide. Fortune 500 companies are actively trying to scale up Android deployments to 100,000 or 500,000 devices without ruining the customer experience or performance. Esper’s world-class customer support team is really excited by these opportunities to grow some of the world’s biggest and most complex Android fleets.

We plan to maintain Esper’s remarkably fast rate of product innovation to expand our core product offerings. Currently, we’re adding sophisticated new content management capabilities to fit edge content delivery network use cases. We’re also growing Esper’s India network of partners, including value-added resellers (VARs) and independent software vendors in retail, healthcare, hospitality, and education. Our Android partnership ecosystem has given us many opportunities to collaborate on cutting-edge solutions with world-renowned brands like Honeywell, Zebra, Posbank, and Lenovo.

The pandemic has affected every sector. How are you coping?

The events of 2020 have been enormously challenging. It’s essential to acknowledge the impact of the pandemic on entire communities and sectors. The only way to solve today and tomorrow’s challenges and move forward is to work together. As an entrepreneur, I believe in growing a socially-responsible business. That’s why Esper has released a free product tier for innovators and small businesses. We’ve also strengthened non-profit partnerships with Hungerbox and iTeach schools, Teach for India and Mahindra Foundation in recent months.

Mobile adoption has grown quickly due to COVID-19, and many recent Android innovations have the potential to create a healthier, better world for everyone. Since our Series A venture capital funding round in February, Esper has experienced month-over-month revenue growth. We’ve also doubled our global employee headcount - which is particularly remarkable considering our staff has mostly worked from home.

Business agility has been a huge part of Esper’s story so far. The pandemic has forced us to change and innovate very quickly to stay ahead in rapidly-changing industries. We’re excited to continue evolving within our current focus verticals and be part of the mobile revolution in retail, logistics, healthcare, education, and more.

You cater to a very wide market. Who are your customers?

Esper is vertical agnostic. Our biggest success has been in logistics and supply chain but we have seen initial momentum in education, retail, payments and BFSI sectors. India is actually adopting Android devices and gadgets across verticals.

We assist businesses in IoT deployment across industries such as retail, restaurants, logistics, and the supply chain. Enterprise customers enrol their devices on to the Esper platform for cloud lifecycle management, including app installation, settings configurations, and rebooting devices.

Esper has a growing number of exciting customer use cases in healthcare and telemedicine space. We have several remote patient monitoring clients who use Esper’s APIs in really interesting ways, like predicting the risk of a patient experiencing an accident or providing personalized physical therapy after major surgeries. We’re also deploying an increasing number of kiosks for self-serve patient screening in hospital and clinic scenarios, including thermal temperature scanners that can identify and triage patients with COVID-19 symptoms.

We also have a rapidly-growing number of customers and partners in the education industry. Esper has helped our non-profit partners at iTeach schools and other school districts worldwide deploy thousands of remotely-managed student tablets for distance learning under pandemic conditions. We’re able to create custom settings for devices and apps to make sure students are productive and safe. Limiting student access to social media apps or browsers can protect learners from adult content without inhibiting education.

And finally, we’ve had a lot of rapid growth in self-serve kiosks, payment kiosks, and contactless payments. Many organizations in retail, hospitality and the restaurant vertical are quickly upgrading their mobile technologies for customer self-service food ordering or self-check payments. Esper is able to help companies deploy kiosks quickly or upgrade their existing kiosk technologies to accommodate new capabilities like payments.

What are your Post-Covid plans?

We plan to maintain our incredible growth rate and share Android DevOps with new customers, continuous product innovation and expand our core product offerings. Currently, we’re adding sophisticated new content management capabilities to fit edge content delivery network use cases.

We’re also growing Esper’s India network of partners, including value-added resellers (VARs) and independent software vendors in retail, healthcare, hospitality, and education. Our Android partnership ecosystem has given us many opportunities to collaborate on cutting-edge solutions with world-renowned brands like Honeywell, Zebra, Posbank, and Lenovo.

Funding

We are a venture-backed startup. We have raised a combined $10.5M in funding from our Seed and Series-A round. Our Series-A round was led by Madrona Ventures in February 2020 and saw participation from existing seed investors Root Ventures, Ubiquity Ventures, Haystack Ventures, and Pathbreaker Ventures.