Emergent CEO Doesn’t See Lovable, Replit as Competition

For the last month, Emergent Founder and CEO Mukund Jha didn’t get much shut-eye. He has been busy with the company’s latest launch, Wingman. 

He was even using the OpenClaw-like tool during a flight between Delhi and Bengaluru. He sent a heavy video file to Wingman and received a converted version on WhatsApp within minutes.

“I just texted my Wingman that ‘here is the link, figure out how to download this video, convert it to mp4, and send it to me on WhatsApp so that I can actually view it’. Five minutes later, it actually sent me a video on WhatsApp, which was our launch video,” he tells AIM in an exclusive interaction.

Wingman, built in just three weeks with some parts vibe-coded on Emergent,  allows agents to work autonomously in the background, executing tasks across applications, workflows, and communication channels. Users can operate multiple agents simultaneously, each focused on a different aspect of work, such as schedule management, social media oversight, sales assistance, research analysis, and hiring.

Built as a messaging-first interface, Wingman allows users to interact with it through platforms such as WhatsApp, Telegram, or iMessage, assigning tasks conversationally. Once connected, it integrates with common applications like email, calendars, Slack, and other workplace software, allowing it to coordinate actions across systems. 

“We are moving into a world where you will soon have agents which can run for 24 hours autonomously without any guidance,” Jha says. 

He further shares that the company will launch a new agent soon, which will enable users to simply give an instruction and then the system will take care of everything. “It will be able to run for 8–10 hours without any instructions,” he adds. 

Wingman vs OpenClaw 

Jha emphasises that security has been a core focus while building Wingman, given the sensitivity of the data and actions involved. On the other hand, OpenClaw is not yet enterprise-friendly. 

It allows agents to access systems and take actions on behalf of users, ensuring critical safety. “You are going to allow agents to take action on your behalf, so we want to make sure that it is secure and safe.”

The platform includes fine-grained controls and safeguards against risks, such as prompt injection attacks. He adds that the team is actively working to mitigate most risks. 

Emergent is also stress-testing the system with external partners. “We are actively red-teaming it right now with a couple of large security firms,” Jha says, adding that the goal is to further build resilience in the platform before wider adoption.

Wingman is a natural extension of the existing vibe coding platform. Jha says the team is already seeing early users build practical applications on Emergent. “People have built content marketing agents that crawl websites, gather content, and manage their social presence,” he says. 

He adds that others are creating sales agents that qualify leads and automatically reach out via email or calls, as well as operational agents that coordinate with workers on WhatsApp and manage day-to-day workflows.

Global ambition, Indian roots

Built in India, Emergent’s footprint is overwhelmingly global. “70% of our revenue comes from North America, Europe, and roughly 12% comes from India,” Jha says.

The platform is also seeing strong traction among small businesses, particularly those outside traditional commerce. “

Traditionally, these businesses had limited options—either buying off-the-shelf software that did not fully meet their needs or hiring developers at a steep cost. “It would cost at least $100,000 to $200,000 to build the first piece of software,” Jha says, adding that maintenance adds to the burden. 

With the rise of vibe coding tools, as those barriers fall, he adds, more users are now building software not just for internal use but also to sell. “People are building CRMs, ERPs, and there are many factories right now in Germany, the UK, and the US that are running on software built on Emergent.”

Tokenmaxxing 

Jha agrees with NVIDIA chief Jensen Huang that developers should be far more aggressive in their use of tokens, calling it a necessary rethink of how engineering productivity is measured. 

“My thesis is that people should be spending at least as much as their base salary in tokens,” he says.

This may fundamentally change how engineering teams operate, with individual developers commanding significantly larger compute budgets. “Soon we will have super engineers who will have million-dollar token budgets,” Jha says, adding that companies will rationalise how they spend tokens.

The OG Wingman 

In January, Emergent secured $70 million in a Series B round led by Khosla Ventures and SoftBank Vision Fund 2, with continued participation from Prosus, Lightspeed, Together Fund, and Y Combinator.

Jha says Vinod Khosla is pretty excited about Wingman. “He’s been the one who’s been pushing us that we should launch it early.” He adds that both YC President Garry Tan and Khosla are bullish on the agentic era.

However, Emergent’s rapid rise has also invited scrutiny. The company claimed it reached $100 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR) within roughly eight months of launch—a number that immediately raised questions.

Traditional SaaS ARR measures contractually committed revenue, but Emergent’s figure was projected from recent token and credit consumption trends, which can vary considerably over time. “It gets hard to communicate. People are confused about how the revenue is growing so fast,” Jha agrees.

Competition With Lovable and Replit

While tools like Replit and Lovable may appear to operate in the same space, the founder says they target fundamentally different use cases. He notes that Lovable, for instance, is more geared towards prototyping and design, often used by product managers and designers, and competes more closely with tools like Figma.

“We are actually able to build much higher-quality apps… that can go to production,” Jha says, adding that Emergent differentiates itself by handling hosting and infrastructure in-house. He explains that the platform is built to support the entire software lifecycle, not just initial development. 

“Coding is only 20% of the journey… 80% of the work is actually debugging, deploying, fixing bugs, and figuring out how to scale and maintain the software.”

He notes many competing platforms help users get to a first version quickly, but struggle as complexity increases. “Most of these platforms actually plateau very quickly… as you get to the second or third version, it gets even more complex, and the platform starts failing,” Jha says. 

In contrast, he adds, Emergent is already being used to build high-complexity applications at scale. “People are already building apps which have millions of monthly users on the platform… things that actually scale.”