Startup OutsourcingFrom the Indian trenches!

Not every city in India is a startup hub!Bangalore, Chennai, Pune, Mumbai, Delhi, Noida,

Gurgaon, Hyderabad are the usual suspects.

Lesser known cities have good teams too. But they are least exposed to startups. 90% of all Indian dev shops

don’t hangout with local startups!

Water still falls!Most dev shops still think ‘waterfall’ model. Agile is

practiced in few startups at varying vigor.

Scale-Quality combination is elusive!Good dev shops are sacrificing scale for quality and

building products instead. Scaled out dev shops vary in quality often across teams within the company.

The shadow of Big $B Indian IT firms !Entrepreneurs from big Indian IT firms setting up small dev shops are different from those with startup/small

company stints. The dev shops run by the former resemble smaller versions of big IT firms

(Scale over Quality, Spread of services than deep skills in a niche, spec-driven than iterative development)

There are many forms of English!

Our subjective opinion:Bangalore, Mumbai, Chennai, Delhi – You may

understand what they speak & write!

Kolkata, Indore, Jaipur, Ahmedabad, Trivandrum – It’s an acquired skill to follow what they speak & write (heavily

accented!)

Note: This is a sweeping generalization, but a good thumb rule nonetheless!

Key cities in a word or two!

Delhi – Flamboyant. SalesyMumbai – Enterprising. Financially Savvy

Bangalore – Geeky. CosmopolitanChennai – Conservative. Knowledgeable

Kolkata – Argumentative. Artsy

Note: These are generalizations, but a good thumb rule nonetheless!

Customer knows!

Most Indian development teams work with the premise that you know what you want (even if you are wrong).

Many keep quiet. Some hint. Very few argue.

We don’t mean it!

“We’ll try our best” means “We are unsure”“We’ll see what we can do” means “We are not going to do”

“We’ll come back to your right away” means “We shall respond after you remind once more”

“We need a couple of days” means “We need about a week”“We are ready” means “We are 80% there”

Numbers are important but not the end!

Once you demonstrate your ability to be a good customer, Indian dev shops show tremendous flexibility.

Demonstrate by paying on time, being responsive, flexible & by offering to be a reference.

This works at every level of the organization.

There are about 10000 of them!

About 1000 of these are good. At least 100 of them has someone who can be your

outsourced CTO and would understand ‘startup’ way of getting things done.

Which of these 100 do you know and would they suit you? Who knows them?

www.contractiq.comEmail: ashwin@...