uTest gets $17 Mill
By Shalini Singh

American startup uTest.com was launched in 2007 with the aim of testing software for clients for a fee.  Utest has a base of thousands of permanent and freelance testers (many from India) servicing more than 400 clients around the world.

Like other collaborate efforts, uTest has number of ‘Bug Battles’ for its testers to work out problems with computing software systems.  Such competitions provide healthy rivalry between the individual testers and create a media buzz which is always good for business.  In an article published in 2009, I had reported on how an Indian Ranchhod Prajapati had won a ‘Top Tester’ award of $1000.  Ranchhod also won an additional $200 for detecting the ‘Best Bug’ in LinkedIn.  In 2009, another Indian, Jegan Surya won $200 for detecting the ‘Best Bug’ in MySpace’.

In early 2011, uTest announced winners in its second annual “uTester of the Year” competition.  The awards are a program that recognizes consistently outstanding performance within its testing community. The winners were selected from more than 33,000 professional testers from 172 countries around the world based upon their performance across several hundred functional, load and usability test cycles for web, desktop and mobile application testing.  This 2011 announcement included the following Indians

- Top Tester: Amit K. (India)
- Top Tester: Atul A. (India)
- Top Tester: Santhosh T. (India)

uTest has just announced that they have completed a $17 million Series D round of funding. The round was led by QuestMark Partners, with full participation from all of uTest’s previous investors including Scale Venture Partners, Longworth Venture Partners, Egan-Managed Capital and Mesco Ltd. This latest round brings the company’s total funding to more than $37 million since its 2007 founding, and marks one of the largest investments ever made in a crowdsourcing company.

uTest has had a revenue increase of 250% year-over-year since 2008.  Its blue chip clients includes global brands like Google, Microsoft, Groupon, AOL and the BBC, as well as high-growth innovators such as Trulia, Tapulous, Bump and BillGuard