Different from other technology companies in Vietnam, from the very beginning, Katalon has set the goal of developing a technology product for the global market.
Solving a difficult problem for the testing community
The process of researching and developing products and software technology solutions cannot lack testing activities. Testers take on the role of end users to check the standard of features, or support programmers in testing features.
Testing is an indispensable activity in the process of researching and developing products and software technology solutions.
The mushrooming growth of applications and software solutions running on multiple devices (desktop, laptop, mobile, etc.), multiple environments (Web, Android, MacOS, Windows, etc.) makes manual testing - often jokingly called "testing with a rice-powered machine" - difficult to meet requirements, risking prolonging the time to bring software and solutions to market, and easily missing out on optimal business opportunities. While users have countless channels to evaluate the quality of products and solutions, just a few comments about poor quality will make it difficult for technology businesses to sell.
The testing community has a strong desire for an automated testing solution that can reduce the “burden” of work, giving more time to focus on more complex, highly specialized testing tasks. This helps improve the overall quality and reliability of the application, while minimizing the risk of end-user errors.
Seven years ago, less than 20% of software development companies in the world seriously invested in and implemented automated testing. The automated testing solution market at that time did not have many "warriors". Some solutions were expensive, with licensing and deployment costs of up to tens of thousands of dollars per user, and only very large companies could afford them. As for open source software testing solutions, if businesses wanted to use them, they had to spend more money on a team of programmers to package and customize them according to their needs.
Realizing that research and development (R&D) of automated testing solutions is a difficult problem but the market demand is very large and the potential is very large, the two leaders of KMS Technology, including CEO Lam Quoc Vu and Product Development Director Tran Kien Uy, decided to deploy the Katalon project, a low-code automation testing tool. Accordingly, people without programming skills or with basic programming skills can still use the tool to automate and increase the efficiency of the testing process.
After a successful testing process, in 2016, Katalon separated into its own company, with a human resources, operations, and business model aimed at international customers.
Mr. Tran Kien Uy, General Director of Katalon.
“Different from other technology companies in Vietnam, right from the beginning, Katalon set the goal of developing a technology product for the global market. With the experience of building and developing QASymphony (a company founded by KMS Technology in 2011 - PV), Mr. Vu and I have full confidence that Katalon will be successful, marking the presence of Vietnamese intelligence on the world technology map”, General Director Tran Kien Uy recalled the early days of Katalon.
Promote digital transformation, create automated testing movement
Sitting down to plan the first year, with a team of only 6 people, the two co-founders of Katalon only modestly set a target of reaching about 1,000 - 2,000 users, because Katalon is a B2B technology application (for businesses) and not a personal entertainment application. The result of achieving 30,000 users after one year was a big surprise.
Pursuing a product-led growth business model, in addition to efforts to improve and develop software and solutions, Katalon also quickly built an international user community. This community actively contributed many opinions from practical experiences, helping the Katalon team quickly identify more fully and clearly the needs of the market and promptly respond. Thanks to that, Katalon's development speed is very fast, almost every month there is a new version.
“In terms of user community, in India, many YouTubers create channels to guide how to use Katalon, attracting tens of thousands of subscribers. Personally, I know many individuals and organizations that have built Katalon Studio training programs on paid online teaching channels. In Vietnam as well as internationally, many forums such as TestingVN, Reddit, StackOverflow, etc. have groups discussing the use of Katalon Studio. The combination of manual testing and automated testing helps save testing time significantly, improving software quality. Not only is it a tool to help improve work efficiency for testing staff, Katalon has also become a trend,” Mr. Uy happily said.
With the support of the international user community, Katalon “took off” very quickly.
With the support of the international user community, Katalon took off very quickly in the next 2 years. In the 3rd year, Katalon topped the list of Gartner and Capterra's votes for highly rated automated testing tools. The number of positive reviews for Katalon was 3-4 times higher than the product in second place. Up to now, Katalon has held the title of the most favorite automated testing tool for 3 consecutive years.
In 2019, Katalon's leadership decided to commercialize the product to have more reinvestment sources. In addition to the free product for the community from the early days of entering the market, the company also offers a special version with some advanced security and management features such as user management, project management, authorization, etc., targeting large enterprises. Katalon's largest orders come from customers in the banking and service business sectors.
By the end of 2020, Katalon's staff had grown to 20 people, and the number of users had skyrocketed to around 350,000, more than 10 times higher than at the end of the first year. Revenue growth has consistently been 100%.
Globally, more than 30,000 organizations trust Katalon products. The level of product engagement is very high compared to the industry average. Net revenue retention reaches 140%/year.
Raising capital to increase R&D investment
With its remarkable growth, Katalon has caught the attention of many investment funds, but has chosen to partner with Elephant Partners (USA). The $27 million series A investment from Elephant Partners has helped Katalon gain more investment in R&D, giving it more confidence to continue on its development journey.
R&D activities are of special interest to Katalon.
R&D activities at Katalon are carried out through two main departments. One is the R&D department, which is responsible for researching and developing practical features and functions that can be directly integrated into the Katalon Platform through the application of artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), thereby improving the overall experience on the platform. In parallel, Katalon also has a team of AI engineers, focusing on researching and developing many features with AI and ML applications from 2021.
The second is the Software Scientific Research Department (SSR), led by an Associate Professor - PhD, responsible for researching, developing and evaluating methods and initiatives in the field of software testing. The research of this department will be applied to improve products or published in the form of scientific research reports, contributing to the overall development of the industry. SSR has published many studies on the application of AI, ML and natural language processing in automated testing. Each year, this department will issue a comprehensive report on market statistics as well as trends in the automated testing market, and publish new research of Katalon in world technology magazines.
“Automatic programs generate millions of results, without AI application, it is difficult to analyze each result and give an accurate answer. Katalon's advantage of owning a large number of users is a favorable condition for AI, ML to analyze and give the most satisfactory answer possible about the function and quality of products/solutions”, Katalon's General Director noted.
The research and development team and IT engineers account for half of the total staff, helping Vietnamese enterprises successfully build a comprehensive quality testing platform with a diverse range of products (TestOps, TestCloud, Studio...) trusted by the international community.
A challenging journey
“There is no development or growth without challenges and even a price to pay,” General Director Katalon frankly shared in response to the question “Is the company's development journey full of smooth sailing and acceleration?”
One of the first difficulties Katalon faced when it split into its own company was the lack of experienced personnel in marketing and selling technology products to customers in international markets.
Unable to do marketing by asking celebrities or KOLs (influencers) to help advertise as is common in the Vietnamese market, or spending a lot of money on advertising to increase coverage, Katalon turned to user communities about testing in different countries to introduce itself.
“We used a non-traditional approach, jokingly called “guerrilla marketing”. We approached and interacted with user groups flexibly, based on the actual use value of the product to connect with the early adopters, and these user groups became the word-of-mouth propaganda team that helped spread the product,” Mr. Uy revealed the secret.
Orienting the company to develop global products, Katalon's leaders have had many headaches with human resources. Having recruited many foreigners from the UK, US, India, etc., in addition to the story of high salaries, a series of other problems arising related to language, culture, working environment, etc. show that building a human resources model is not a simple matter. There is no common pattern for all technology companies, but "each house has its own situation", so you have to find a suitable solution for yourself.
Since its establishment, Katalon has gone through many unsuccessful "trials" before arriving at an effective commercialization model that meets current market needs.
Katalon had to go through many unsuccessful "trials" before arriving at an effective commercialization model.
“In the early stages, confident of having hundreds of thousands of users, Katalon tried to create Market Play, similar to App Store, Google Store... (allowing users to use products for free, charging for applications and plugins sold together) but did not achieve the desired results. The reason was soon identified: Users were corporate employees, often not willing to use personal expenses to buy applications for business purposes. Another “failed experiment”: Creating a special packaging program for companies with very special testing needs. But approaching this model only served a limited group of customers, unable to expand the business,” Mr. Uy recounted past unsuccessful experiments.
Willing to share his “hard-won experience” with other Vietnamese businesses, especially startups, General Director Tran Kien Uy hopes that “the Vietnamese business community will confidently do business in the international market with products that meet market needs, solve the difficulties and desires of end users, and do things that no one has done before”, and believes that “the future path is very wide, many Vietnamese companies and young people can do the same thing as Katalon”.
Working environment "other people's company"
Despite being a technology company, Katalon’s office is always filled with fresh flowers. Employees receive many gifts such as cups, bags, hats, shirts, etc. The standard computer at the company is Macbook. Not only that, Katalon has been implementing many programs and initiatives to improve physical and mental health, improve work-life balance, learning and career development for employees.
Recent notable policies include: Flexible working - employees can work from home 2 days/week; Comprehensive health insurance package for employees and 2 family members; A series of mental health sharing programs. In particular, all Katalon employees receive the same amount of funding for optional personal development activities.
For the past 2 years, Katalon has continuously won the “Great place to work” award.
Katalon continuously wins the “Great place to work” award.
This information makes many people in the Vietnamese technology industry exclaim: "It really is someone else's company."
“People are the key factor in the development of Katalon. Mr. Vu and I both hope that Katalon will be an international working environment right in Vietnam, bringing many career development opportunities for young Vietnamese people as well as Vietnamese people living abroad with ambition and capacity. Our current staff has many people who have studied abroad. Some people said that 1 year of working at Katalon is equivalent to 3 years in another company,” Mr. Uy confided.
Not only taking care of the present, Katalon's leaders also consider the long-term future. In recent years, Katalon has actively cooperated with universities, sponsoring licenses to gradually introduce automated testing solutions into the curriculum; supporting students to gain practical experience at the company to have data for topics, theses, and dissertations. A rather special thing is that the Katalon automated testing solution system has become a scientific research topic for many students.
MBA students visit Katalon's office.
In 2023, Katalon will launch The Next Gen-K Program for the first time to support the development of young talents, the foundation for sustainable resource development for the software industry in Vietnam. During the 6-month internship program, students will experience a professional international working environment, learn the necessary practical knowledge and skills, so that after graduation, they will be ready to enter the competitive labor market, adapting to all changes in technology in the future.
After seriously experiencing the entire life cycle of technology products at Katalon, young people who want to start a business will be more confident because they have a basic understanding of what needs to be done.
Objectively speaking, not many companies have a good internship environment like Katalon. That’s why there were more than 3,000 applications for internships. In the end, only 30 were selected.
“Katalon is very happy to be doing some good things for the community and students. Hopefully other technology companies will do the same. If we don’t “sow the seeds” now, how can we “reap the fruit” and have a good team to do the next things?”, Katalon’s CEO expressed.
Applying Vietnamese technology to conquer international customers
Katalon's client list includes many major international brands. Among them, the world's largest telecommunications and media group, headquartered in the United States, leaves a special mark in the mind of General Director Tran Kien Uy.
This group came to Katalon through the introduction of a number of consulting units. The telecommunications giant made many very high demands on technology solutions, security, information safety, etc. After many evaluations and analyses on many aspects, Katalon was approved to become the group's main testing product. The license sale contract for the group was Katalon's largest contract at the time 3 years ago. Recently, the two sides have just signed a new contract. The US group sent an email thanking the Vietnamese business for its support.
From a user perspective, Mr. Johnson, Head of Quality Assurance Engineering at SAGA, appreciates Katalon for helping the SAGA team improve their work efficiency with a flexible automated testing solution: “Previously, manual testing could only test about 30 scenarios in 2 days. The Katalon testing platform has tripled the testing capacity and reduced the process from 2 days to 2 hours.”
Last year, Katalon in India officially opened with about 40 employees. The journey of Vietnamese enterprises to “go out to sea” is almost limitless when applying Vietnamese technology is always interested and loved by the international user community. In Japan, there are people who “admire” it so much that they wrote a book about Katalon.
Katalon currently has more than 250 employees in Vietnam and more than 100 employees internationally.
“Currently, Katalon has more than 250 employees in Vietnam and more than 100 employees internationally (USA, India, Canada...). Most of the management team has experience working in large-scale international corporations. Looking to the future, Katalon has a very stable and long-term growth picture. By 2030, we aim for Kalaton to be one of the Top 5 most used solutions in the world in the field of automated testing, contributing to building a better image of Vietnam in the international technology market,” Mr. Uy confidently said.
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