COVID has exposed the fragility of various organisational processes, internal as well as external: The pandemic has spotlighted the lack of digital dexterity of many companies prompting them to get with the program. As things stand, over 70% of businesses have a digital transformation strategy or are working on it. To that end, no-code has become a real catalyst in driving digital adoption.
No-code helps non-technical employees to use their domain knowledge and skills to create a digital solution without coding. This democratisation has opened up a world of digital possibilities for more businesses, leading to faster innovation and solutions. The agility and adaptability found in no-code can help tackle the IT backlog and enable rapid prototyping without additional overheads.
Hyderabad-based Quixy is a cloud-based no-code application development platform that provides pre-built solutions for various use cases such as CRM, project management, HRMS, travel and expense management, incident management, etc. Founded in 2019, Quixy allows business users with no coding skills to automate workflows and processes and build enterprise-grade applications, using simple drag and drop design, ten times faster than the traditional approach.
Recently, Quixy has been recognised as a ‘leader’ in no-code application development and business process management in G2’s Winter 2020 report and is ranked among the top 25 India Sellers’ Best Software Award for 2021. Gartner Peer Insights has also recognised it in its ‘Voice of the Customer (VoC)’ report. To understand how Quixy is leading this no-code revolution, Analytics India Magazine got in touch with Gautam Nimmagadda, Founder & CEO, Quixy.
Edited excerpts:
AIM: How does Quixy stand out in this competitive market of no-code development?
Gautam Nimmagadda: No-code is a development method that can completely democratise the current application development landscape. At Quixy, we want to make sure that no-code is an easily accessible potential solution for everyone who needs it. Our flagship product is called ‘Quixy’ — a no-code business application platform that enables business users and process experts to build simple workflows and complex data-centric end-to-end business solutions. We have simplified and abstracted the development process through an intuitive visual interface with no coding knowledge requirement.
We aim to provide organisations across industries with an easy no-code solution that can enhance their existing operations or completely rework their processes to build better ones. Quixy combines an easy and intuitive interface for building solutions with the capability to create complex solutions. It abstracts away all the complexities of building enterprise-grade software for mid to large organisations. Creating enterprise-grade software can often be tricky, even for professional developers, but with Quixy, it’s easier than ever to build the right solution for your needs ten times faster. Instead of asking for a lot of input from the citizen developers, we simplify the process and make it possible for any non-technical user to build software.
Some of the critical features of Quixy are:
- A customisable user-interface: A drag and drop UI builder ensures that businesses can have an interface that is perfect for the organisation and its team.
- An intuitive workflow builder: Workflows are essential for keeping a company running smoothly, and Quixy can help businesses visualise simple and complex workflows at the click of a button.
- Ready-to-use templates: Multiple readymade customisable templates can be used so that businesses can benefit from Quixy from the very first day.
- Efficient testing: Businesses can test the application and workflows built for web and mobile using the Quixy Simulator.
- Effortless deployment and improvement: The continuous deployment approach allows to create and deploy applications with no downtime. These deployed apps can also be edited easily as per needs.
- Reminders & Escalations: Quixy sends users reminders and escalations when necessary in a workflow, ensuring that no step is overlooked, leading to the best result possible.
- Insights: Quixy provides clear insights into the processes, highlighting the areas of improvement and high efficiencies, allowing organisations to continuously improve through data-driven decision-making.
AIM: How is Quixy leveraging artificial intelligence and machine learning for their products/services? Tell us about your core tech stack.
Gautam Nimmagadda: We are constantly working on innovating and taking advantage of the newest technologies to provide the best value for our customers. We are leveraging technologies such as robotic process automation, artificial intelligence and IoT to make it more powerful while retaining the simplicity.
We are also looking to use natural language processing to allow our clients to use the rest of our services through a communication platform. For instance, a chatbot can greatly increase efficiency when dealing with leave requests or any other requests from the users, especially if it can be integrated with communication platforms like Microsoft Teams, Slack or WhatsApp.
Further, we have piloted predictive analytics to reduce the time our users spend while creating apps. Predictive analytics can also help speed up this process by using past data and predicting exactly what the client needs based on previous instances.
Instead of creating a form every time, we aim to make it easier by simply scanning an image and creating a form based on the image, using computer vision and image processing for object detection & OCR. This might not always be 100% accurate, but it definitely helps in reducing the work needed to create a form through Quixy.
Quixy is also planning to leverage an AI and ML-powered virtual assistant that can anticipate what the user needs to improve productivity. The core tech of the company comprises Angular & NoSQL.
AIM: Is no-code the future of app development? How is the rise of the no-code development platform democratising data science?
Gautam Nimmagadda: Undoubtedly, no-code will be the future of app development and overtake all other methods. We believe 80-90% of app development will shift to no-code in this decade. This shift to no-code will further spur innovation in this space, improving no-code platforms’ capabilities with time, creating a snowball effect. We will also see an extensive spread of no-code beyond app development to a much broader digital landscape due to the unique advantages of democratisation, speed, and agility.
The foundation for data science is, obviously, data. One of the current challenges is that most organisations are not fully digital because of various constraints, leading to lesser data availability. No-code can help companies tackle these constraints with ease, enabling them to go fully digital much faster. Going fully digital can help them overcome any inefficiencies in time, cost, or agility, leading to more comprehensive data being available.
No-code platforms have also come up with a way to allow non-technical users who understand data and their domain to organise data and build ML and AI solutions using visual interfaces without any need for coding knowledge. This opens up the world of data science to users who were previously hindered by their inability to code. No-code platforms will lead to an explosion in data science and will encourage more participation.
AIM: Is low code’s traction going to bridge the skill gaps or lead to unemployment?
Gautam Nimmagadda: There’s always a fear of unemployment when new technologies begin to surface as people try to find where they fit in the evolving technological landscape. However, history shows that constructive technologies that bring value to society can help create new opportunities while transitioning away from old methods of doing work.
No-code is not different — we will see more and more citizens participate in software development allowing professional developers to focus on advanced and specialised areas. No-code can even empower individuals to find and create new job roles where they can leverage their domain knowledge without being held back by their lack of coding skills. This can also encourage innovative and fresh ideas that can be brought to reality using no-code.
This hypothesis is backed by research, where it has been predicted that while there will be demand for 500 million apps by 2025, there will be only enough capacity to deliver 50 million apps highlighting the massive shortage of software developer skills. This is a gap that no-code can bridge, leading to better innovation and productivity in companies globally.
AIM: How do Indian firms fulfil the rising demand for low code software platforms? What are your views on low code for SMBs?
Gautam Nimmagadda: As no-code/low-code is a rapidly growing space, many different market vendors have products that cater to various problems and industries. There are vendors for different services such as chatbots, front-end, eCommerce, WordPress, landing pages, portfolio creation, form building, etc., in the market currently. As most platforms use SaaS as their business model, geography is no longer a concern as the cloud allows customers to access products from any location in the world.
At Quixy, we mainly focus on helping medium to large businesses with their problems; however, no-code can be used by companies of any size. Small and medium businesses (SMBs) can leverage no-code by creating ERPs on a shared platform for different departments. Data silos are a persistent problem in most companies, and no-code can help eradicate those by providing a shared platform for their employees and departments. Even entrepreneurs can benefit from no-code as they can create a minimally viable product at a much faster rate and test it equally fast.
