A canvas that’s filling fast

A start-up for start-ups is what you could define CanvasFlip as. An app prototyping platform that lets you test the usability of an app you’re developing, the Hyderabad-founded company recently raised $1.2 million in funding, and its plans to take things to the next level have already begun.

The brainchild of Vipul Mishra and Manish Jha, two engineers previously working at Tech Mahindra and Deloitte, CanvasFlip’s team and clientele have boomed over the past year, thanks to their drive to perfect their product. “The problem we wanted to solve with this product was to just have better usability for the product,” 26-year-old Vipul says, adding,

“Every week, we try to speak to our 80-100 customers, such as Paytm and MakeMyTrip, and understand their needs. So I would say we have only scratched the surface for our product so far.”

While Manish, 27, hails from Lucknow, Vipul is from Ghaziabad, and is a serial entrepreneur. He started his first company, Tech New Soft, at college, but realised he needed to understand how billion-dollar companies worked if he wanted  to be successful. “I wanted to understand how things worked... from international operations to managing many employees,” he says, and so he joined Mahindra-Satyam in the city in 2010.

It was here that he started working alongside Manish. Their entrepreneurial spirit grew and the two started a slew of projects together before settling on CanvasFlip’s concept in 2014.

“CanvasFlip actually started as an animation platform,” Vipul says, “The idea was that any non-technical person would also be able to create HTML5 animations.”

Using the animation platform Canvas as the base for their engine, the first feature they developed was a “flip”, which is how the name came about.

After meeting start-up experts like Ramesh Loganathan and Srinivas Kollipara and getting good responses, they quit their jobs and began working on product prototyping, which they discovered was the most lucrative choice for their product’s usage.

While the company managed to grow, the two found that Hyderabad did not possess the infrastructure they required. “Many people here didn’t mind working for us with no compensation, so it’s got a great culture,” Vipul says, “But investment opportunities still need to develop.”

After taking their company to start-up accelerator T Labs in Noida in April this year, they are now based at Bengaluru’s Microsoft Ventures, and they hope to base their efforts there after they’re done with their program.