May 25, 2025
00:00
‘India is our fastest growing market after U.S.,’ Co-founder and CEO of Replit Amjad Masad says
Replit, is seeing a resurgence like many tech companies since the advent of AI. Within the past year, the AI coding platform has emerged as a prominent player in the “vibe coding” movement. Now, non-technical users and casual software enthusiasts are building apps using natural language prompts through Replit’s popular tool, Agent. In the past six to seven months, Agent has proven to be a game-changer, leading to a substantial surge in revenue and user base. However, the AI code editing landscape is looking increasingly competitive, with companies like Cursor and Bolt gaining traction. Even bigger players have entered the realm with OpenAI acquiring Windsurf, formerly known as Codeium, while Apple is collaborating with Anthropic on an AI coding tool.
In an exclusive interview with The Hindu, Replit’s co-founder and CEO Amjad Masad shared his perspectives on competition, challenges of vibe coding, future of software engineering, and potential of AI agents in coding.
Edited excerpts:
How do you differentiate Replit from Cursor and Bolt, given the competition in the segment?
Amjad Masad: I think we’re more accessible. We have a mobile app for Android users that’s actually very popular in India. We offer a lot more - it’s not just the coding environment, but also the hosting environment and the database, so it’s a full suite of services. With any other tool you need to compose these things which requires skill, patience and effort.
What are the drawbacks of vibe-coding, as some critics highlight young talent who lack a grasp of programming concepts build projects using tools like Replit?
Masad: When I started programming, I got a PC in 1993 and then in 1994 bought a programming environment that was fully visual. I could write small pieces of code and drag and drop different functions. It was very much like no-code. But it made me more curious and inspired me to learn more. I was creating something and I was proud of it, so that motivated me. When you teach people things in abstract, ideas can seem random because you don’t know what it’s for. I believe people will continue to learn even if they start this way.
However, the criticism is to be taken seriously. It is the job of educators to figure out how to teach students in a way that’s meaningful - not just AI coding tools but also AI search tools like ChatGPT.
If you’re an entrepreneur and your aim is to build a startup, your first order of business is not learning code. It’s actually going and building the thing. But if you want to have a long career in computer software engineering, then you must go to the basics of a computer science (CS) class. I do think there’s going to be fewer professional coders. Obviously, people who are building global platforms, cloud systems, or self-driving systems will remain. You don’t want them to vibe code your Tesla into a wall.
What are the skills you’re looking for when Replit is hiring?
Masad: It depends on the role completely. For people who are responsible for building apps quickly, we don’t really care what tools they are using. For people who are building the core infrastructure, we do care. So, then we want someone who understands how to do memory management and someone who has a good understanding of CS.
What is Replit’s moat?
Masad: I think moats are really hard to know early on while the industry is still shaping up. For example, we didn’t understand Google’s moat in 1999. It was clear only in retrospect that they have this data flywheel and distribution advantages. It’s apparent that foundation models have no moats if open-source models can catch up to fundamentally new innovation like OpenAI’s o1 in a few months.
At Replit, our work is very mission-driven. Typically, we are working on how to make the agent more reliable and the user interface and experience better. A lot of it is incremental improvement.
What are your expansion and funding plans?
Masad: We’re growing revenue and users really fast. Actually, India is our second fastest growing country after the U.S. We’re going to invest more in perhaps local growth. We’ve worked with some influencers in Japan, Korea and India. In general, the growth has been organic word-of-mouth. Plus, most of our funds will be spent on research and development.
Replit has a lot of Indian engineers and opening an office here is not out of the question. But the team is small now and it’s hard to fracture it. India has a sizable business and it makes a lot of sense to have a customer service and sales centre there. Obviously, India has a ton of amazing talent and we want to hire here. If we’re going to expand, it’s in our top three on the list.
Published - May 24, 2025 03:38 pm IST
