Airtable’s Huge $11 Billion Valuation reached end of 2021 it has attracted a large number of ambitious entrepreneurs to the low-code database space. They covet even a small slice of the pie enjoyed by the decade-old American giant. While SaaS has long been a proven business model in the US, emerging markets, and even China’s booming tech industry, many users still expect software to be free.
To increase the number of paying customers, SaaS startups from Asia, created by experienced and affordable developers, are venturing into the West. Hong Kong-based low-code database APITable is one of them (it’s in the process of setting up a Canadian base). The company is not shy about its ambition to take on Airtable. For example, his blog featured a step by step guide on how to migrate from Airtable to your own platform (page defunct at press time).
APITable is competing with a handful of new start-ups, such as Amsterdam’s Baserow and San Francisco’s NocoDB, to provide an open-source, visual solution for creating elegant-looking, intelligent databases. Its name suggests a focus on system interoperability. In the future, users will be able to connect the low-code tool to platforms like Zapier, Slack, Google Workspace, and ChatGPT using the APITable API, company co-founder and COO Gary Li says in an interview.
For users who want a ready-to-use product that requires minimal technical skills and third-party hosting, the software comes with a paid premium version. As of today, APITable has been “starred” about 6500 times on GitHub, an indicator of a project’s popularity among developers. While Li declines to disclose the size of the company’s revenue, he claims that by 2022, “organization users,” including free and paid users, grew from 6,000 to more than 20,000 in 30 countries.
The APITable founding team tested the water for the first time in China. Its Chinese version, Vika, launched in 2019 at a time when venture capitalists, fueled by the rise of Zoom, Stripe, Canva, Figma, Airtable, and other cloud-based solutions in the West, were rushing to bet. for local alternatives.
The APITable itself secured funding from prominent venture capitalists such as IDG Capital, GL Ventures (Hillhouse’s early-stage arm), and 5Y Capital, which is considered by some to be a benchmark for enterprise technology investing in China. The startup had raised $10 million in total funding by early 2021 with a valuation of approximately $75 million.
Back in China, Vika has not been short of rivals. Companies from giants like ByteDance and Tencent to underdogs like Hipacloud and Treelab clamored to build their responses to Airtable. Going forward, the parent company will focus more on expansion in the west through APITable. “Being open source is a form of marketing in itself. However, to generate revenue, we continue to rely on SaaS sales,” Li acknowledges.
APITable CEO kelly-chan seems to know a thing or two about creating tools for non-technical users. He was previously CTO at HeyTea, a venture capital-backed company that revolutionized the bubble tea business in China. The chain not only pioneered the novel cheese flavor, but more importantly, invested heavily in a sizable developer team, a rather unusual move in the food and beverage industry. The results were reassuring. Under Chan’s helmHeyTea created an app to speed up orders and shorten wait times, as well as increase recurring revenue through a membership scheme.
