Instabug raises $46m to build new app performance monitoring platform

The Cairo-born start-up’s Series B round was led by New York-based technology investor Insight Partners

Instabug founders Moataz Soliman and Omar Gabr. Photo: Instabug

Instabug, a software start-up founded in Egypt and based in the US that provides bug and crash reporting for mobile applications, has raised $46 million to further develop its platform and expand its customer base.

The second round of funding, also referred to as Series B, was led by New York-based technology investor Insight Partners, which has $90 billion in regulatory assets under management and more than 600 companies in its portfolio.

Existing investor Accel, as well as new participants Forgepoint Capital and Endeavor, also contributed.

“Leaders in industries spanning banking, transportation, retail and education have realised mobile applications are the primary way customers will experience their brands and products,” said Omar Gabr, chief executive and co-founder of Instabug.

“This new capital will help us develop more strategic partnerships with these enterprises as they increase investment in a mobile-first approach to customer engagement.”

App usage was boosted by stay-at-home directives during the Covid-19 pandemic and has continued to grow. Global consumer spending in mobile apps reached $133 billion last year, up nearly 20 per cent from 2020, according to market intelligence provider Sensor Tower.

Last year, Egyptian start-ups raised a record $491m in 147 deals and attracted the highest percentage of foreign investors in the Mena region, according to data platform Magnitt.

Founded in 2016, Instabug achieved record growth last year, reaching more than 2.7 billion mobile devices, processing more than 110 billion mobile sessions and 4.2 billion issues.

More than 25,000 mobile apps from independent developers and large companies, such as DoorDash, InterContinental Hotels Group, Porsche and Verizon, use its product.

The latest funding will be used to build a mobile observability and performance monitoring platform that goes beyond fixing problems as they happen. The observability enables developers to identify areas of poor performance before they cause any issues.

“Instabug is strongly positioned to lead the nascent mobile app observability and monitoring space,” said Ganesh Bell, managing director at Insight Partners. “Its leadership has a deep understanding of the needs faced by mobile-focused/mobile-first organisations and developers.”

Instabug started with $10,000 in funding from accelerator Flat6Labs Cairo before it was accepted into the well-known US accelerator Y Combinator in 2016. It received $1.7m in seed funding from Y Combinator and Palo Alto-based Accel.

In 2020, Instabug raised $5m in series A funding led by Accel, with participation by Cloudera co-founder Amr Awadallah and MoPub founder and chief executive Jim Payne.

The company is now headquartered in San Francisco with a predominantly Cairo-based engineering team.