Don’t know how to code an app? Now everyone can with Kryptos Mobile, the app-maker

As our internet usage gets increasingly skewed from computers to mobiles, apps have become the lifeline for all our online activities. If apps are in focus, can app-makers be far behind? Meet Kryptos Mobile, the app-maker helping colleges across the United States, Canada and Australia create and control their in-house apps without writing complex software codes.

Apart from the must-haves for any college app – class schedules, assignments, transcripts – the Kryptos Mobile app-maker also allows advertisements – from the local pizza store, for instance – that can be controlled and tracked by the colleges themselves.

The beginning

The increase in mobile phone usage and subsequent surge in mobile apps helped Kryptos Mobile Founder Ash Bhardvaj realize that not only would apps be the new internet and the way users access information, but it will also be necessary for any organisation – educational or commercial -- to reach out to its user base through apps. This led them to begin creating mobile apps for universities to help them reach out to students with information that have been going through legacy systems, aka the world wide web.

CampusEAI consortium’s EduTech venture fund invested $2 million and backed the idea. But once they started creating mobile apps, another realisation struck them that they were among the hundreds of mobile app companies doing the same thing. Colleges were dependent on a third-party mobile app development company to even manage and customise apps.

How it works

It’s a one-stop shop for creating mobile apps, tracking usage analytics and inserting or controlling advertisements. No prior coding knowledge is required to create apps. You can create apps across platforms.

As it uses a cloud-based system, there are no hardware or software requirements. The platform can also be used to feed data onto other platforms e.g. web portal systems, Apple Watch, and Google Glass etc. Usage statistics can be tracked using built in analytics. Owners can add advertisements, which they can earn revenue from and control those as well.

Kryptos Mobile charges a license fee for colleges using its app maker, and also has a revenue share agreement on transactions conducted through the app.

The advantage

According to Bhardvaj, the company now has 100 clients or members and a niche in the education sector. They have more than 43 schools and 700 apps live on app stores. They reach one million students today. That’s a captive audience for advertisers looking to tap the student market.

The team

“We are a young team; the average age of our team is below 30, about 12 people,” says Bhardvaj. “The experience I gained while shaping an idea to a full grown operation in my previous employment helped me immensely during the initial days of Kryptos Mobile.”

“My CTO, Anish Kumar, brings great mix of technical expertise and market sensibility,” says Bhardvaj. Prior to Kryptos Mobile, he was a lead architect working with one of the leading ERP companies in the world, he added

Outlook and plans

There are close to 4500 schools and colleges in the US alone, with enterprise systems which need mobile apps to provide critical information to students on the go, says Bhardvaj. In 2013, over 89% of the students under the age group of 16-24 used smart phones. “That’s an audience that we can almost entirely capture with our business model,” he says.

Kryptos Mobile is now looking to expand in India, tapping Indian colleges and universities. They also plan to focus on the commercial market, especially SMEB which usually don’t have a huge budget to create and manage a mobile app for their business.

Bhardvaj says, “We are working on optimizing the platform so that businesses can induce advertisements based on usage. We’re coming up with a platform to consume different advertisement APIs.”

Check out the Kryptos Mobile app here. The company is also one of the Tech30 companies that showcased at TechSparks 2014.