Kundan Joshi, founder of App Labs, joins Sunny Ray to trace his journey from Mumbai, India to becoming a leading app development entrepreneur in Canada. Kundan shares how he moved to Canada at 19, studied software engineering at Western University, and discovered his sales talent working mall kiosks for Rogers high speed internet. That entrepreneurial spark led him into building websites and consulting projects, and eventually into mobile apps years before the iPhone even launched, when he had to spend hours explaining to clients what an app was. By the time the App Store opened, App Labs already had apps ready to go. The conversation covers the rise and fall of BlackBerry as a cautionary Canadian tech story, the importance of product market fit using lessons from The Lean Startup, and how App Labs grew from a one person operation to over 100 employees and 600 plus apps built for major global brands. Kundan also touches on supporting Canadian startups through his incubator work.
A founder who spotted mobile apps before the iPhone existed shares how he built a 600 plus app empire from a mall kiosk start.
Where does your story begin?
I was born in Mumbai, India and did my education there through my first year of university. I came from a family that valued hard work, authenticity and education. I was inspired by my mom's side of the family who were entrepreneurs, and I did internships with my uncle. My dad was an engineer so I knew I wanted to pursue engineering, and I loved math anyway.
What happened when you first came to Canada at 19?
There was reluctance at first because at 19 you have your friend circle and your life set. But I was brought up with an open mind, so I tried to embrace the new country for all the good it had to offer. I restarted my education from scratch at Western University pursuing software engineering, and that is really where my entrepreneurship journey began.
How did you get into sales and eventually start your own thing?
I couldn't get any job except a sales job selling Rogers high speed internet, and it turned out I was great at it because I loved talking to people and helping them solve problems. I made six figures in three months. When summer ended I proposed starting a branch back in London, Ontario, which became a mall kiosk operation I grew from one mall to five.
You said you were building apps before the iPhone even launched. How did that happen?
I was fascinated by technology and always in the know from conferences. I sensed something like the iPhone was coming and that short form mobile experiences would be the future. In 2007 I sometimes spent two hours just explaining to clients what an app even was. When the first iPhone store launched, we already had half a dozen apps ready for clients.
What was your insight that made you believe mobility would matter before it was obvious?
It was about the concept of mobility, understanding what functions people could do while in motion versus tied to a desktop. Working with enterprise clients, the question became which parts of their business would benefit from mobility. For me technology and human experience always mattered together, so when smartphones arrived it clicked that this was the tool to solve those use cases.
Do you think about why BlackBerry, a Canadian company, missed the smartphone wave that Apple captured?
I do think about it a lot. Blackberry missed the cycle of innovation and never adapted as expectations and Moore's Law kept changing. It is also a Canadian story about ecosystems, where startups and scale ups often exit too early instead of staying ambitious enough to become global companies. That is actually why I built an incubator to help Canadian startups think bigger.
Where is App Labs now compared to where it started?
We started from just me and now have over 100 employees, having built more than 600 apps for clients like Unilever, Samsung, Dell, Petro Canada, JBS and Gateway Casinos. What I'm most proud of is the culture we built, one of innovation, teamwork and resilience, which carried us through challenges like the pandemic.
If someone wants to build an app, say around bitcoin, where should they even begin?
I've seen founders skip the core fundamentals just because their idea involves bitcoin, but that does not guarantee success. You need to validate product market fit first, confirm the end user's pain point and your solution, and build hypotheses to test. I always recommend The Lean Startup as a starting point before figuring out your minimum viable product and budget.
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