(L-R) Locofy.ai Co-Founders Sohaib Muhammad and Honey Mittal
Honey Mittal, who came to Singapore from India in 2005, always had a knack for solving problems.
Hailing from a business family, Mittal wanted to start his own company after securing a degree in Computer Science from the National University of Singapore but lacked financial resources. In addition, the responsibility to look after his family rested on his shoulders as the family business was in bad shape.
“So I went for a job at Credit Suisse. I hated the job but I somehow stayed there. In the meantime, I decided to utilise my app-developing skills and previous Microsoft internship experience to build an iOS app similar to Friendster,” he told e27. “That was the first app I developed.”
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Then Mittal started building more apps, one after another, in different verticals and became addicted to app building. To gain more experience and learn from the best of the best, he decided to join a startup. “I worked in multiple startups in Singapore, including travel tech startup WeGo where I met Sohaib Muhammad, an expert app developer who later became my business partner. We then started Locofy.ai,” said Mittal.
Bridging the chasm between designers and developers
Incorporated in 2021, Singapore-based Locofy.ai offers a platform that converts web and mobile designs into working code. The platform can convert Figma/AdobeXD designs to front-end code for web and mobile apps. He claims that the tool can automate up to 50-70 per cent of a front-end software engineer’s work, helping accelerate the process.
The startup works with a combination of plugins, addons, and AI for code generation.
“LocoAI is a much-needed tool for developers. The tool scans the designs and recommends interactive elements (like buttons, inputs, and dropdowns) and allows users to further enhance styling (colours, fonts, borders, etc.), auto-layouts, and effects. In addition, LocoAI handles responsiveness (making your product work on desktop, mobile, and tablet seamlessly), identifies reusable components to reduce unnecessary code (like headers, footers, signup forms, search forms etc.), and lets them accept dynamic values and styles using props — all automatically done by LocoAI. The tool also surfaces code conflicts and offers an easy code merge editor while syncing with Github (code repository),” Mittal elaborated.
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Mittal, who also worked in startups such as Homage and FinAccel, sniffs massive opportunities for Locofy.ai. He says only 20 million people can code, but the global problems being solved with tech have skyrocketed with a rise in private market funding and entrepreneurship not just in Silicon Valley but all around Asia.
“The demand for digitisation (to build digital products/ hire developers) and the supply of developers has never been as imbalanced as it has been in recent times. This imbalance will continue to grow despite recent market corrections and layoffs, especially as every business sees itself as a tech company, and the need for tech is not limited to just tech people anymore,” he said.
Moreover, the advancements in AI have made giant leaps in recent times, making some things possible much earlier than anticipated. A coding co-pilot, or coding agent who does a menial time-consuming task for a developer, is being adopted globally and welcomed by companies and teams as they push to do more with less in the current market.
“Locofy.ai accelerates individuals and tech teams to ship more products with their current setup and allows smaller startups to launch their products faster without the need for an army of software developers. This is huge given that tech spending is the single largest cost on most companies’ sheets, and the lack of engineers is one of the top reasons why most early-stage startups fail,” he reasoned.
Locofy.ai targets anyone building a mobile app, website, or design tool like Figma. It has already gained users across 195 countries and doing a beta with many world-renowned companies, startups, organizations, and universities, such as Apple, Google, Bumble, Tokopedia, NUS, UCLA, and Stanford (none of them is a paying customer yet).
“We are currently taking feedback from them to improve our product to eventually get them to become a paying customer at some point,” he said.
While the global market offers tremendous opportunity, it comes with challenges. While AI has massively shifted what’s possible and what isn’t, there exists confusion between no-code and low-code. Locofy.ai is a low-code tool that accelerates developers, but it also attracts a lot of no-coders (who are used to tools that do not require coding). “Locofy.ai provides codes and goes into technical depths on both designs and code and hence, recommended for designers and developers working together,” he claimed.
Not a magic wand
The second challenge is the perception that AI is a magic wand that will automate everything and take away jobs. Locofy.ai is not replacing jobs. It is built for developers to take away their menial work and let them focus on complex business problems.
“Our goal has never been to eliminate front-end engineering but to automate and reduce the workload of a front-end engineer. We are taking away that burden from engineers. However, there’s always a fuzzy area where people think we are building this to steal their jobs,” he added.
A revenue model is yet to be worked out. However, Mittal said, the company plans to begin with a freemium version so that people can come in and see the value of Locofy.
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Locofy.ai recently raised US$4.25 million in a seed investment round led by Northstar Ventures with participation from Accel Partners, Golden Gate Ventures, and several experienced technopreneurs from Dropbox, Lottiefiles, and Zopim. This brings Locofy.ai’s total raise to US$7.3 million since its incorporation.
“We have just started. I don’t think we have solved the problem completely. We also want to hire the best engineers in the world. Basically, we want to be the undisputed leader in this space. We are working hard towards achieving this goal,” Mittal signed off.
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