An example method to build a virtual appliance for deployment in a virtualized computing environment may include obtaining a base virtual appliance that is application-independent. The base virtual appliance includes a virtual machine, a virtual disk associated with the virtual machine and a guest operating system (OS) installed on the virtual disk. The method may further comprise obtaining an application package associated with an application; and building the virtual appliance by assembling the base virtual appliance with the application package. During the assembly, the application package is installed on the virtual disk of the base virtual appliance such that the virtual machine supports both the guest OS and the application.