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Please introduce your company and give a brief about your role within the organization.
Awsm Digital Innovations was founded in 2010 as Fidiz Solutions, backed by our fascination with WordPress. After a few trial and error processes, Awsm Digital Innovations Pvt Ltd came into existence in 2016. We provide a unique range of WordPress-related services and mobile app development. We develop and distribute both free and premium, clutter-free as well as user-friendly web and mobile products that people would love to use. Premium customer service and quality services in WordPress and mobile app development are our forte. A year back, we have also started a blog devoted to WordPress - wp-content.co, where we share our knowledge.
I am the Founder and Managing Director of Awsm.
What is the story behind starting this company?
After graduation, like most of my generation, I joined a software company. But soon found that the stifling corporate culture was not my cup of tea and decided to resign. I had pretty good design skills but no development skills and was varying about the future when an emerging technology called WordPress caught my eyes. It was love at first sight.
After resigning I started blogging about WordPress and soon got a couple of projects. Money was coming in but the monotony of working alone was getting to me. By chance, I came across some people facing the same issue and we rented a small place where we could come together and work. Soon I began to get more clients and had to rope in some of my friends to help me deliver the work on time.
In 2010, I officially named it Fidiz Solutions and after a year we got our first major client - Nokia. Since then we have never looked back. Today we can boast of 4 WordPress core contributions, Envato Elite Author status, and hundreds of thousands of satisfied clients.
What are your company’s business model–in house team or third party vendors/ outsourcing?
We have a very strong team and are fully in-house. We have a world-class WordPress team with unmatched expertise. Besides providing web and app development services, we have our own plugins and theme. Our freemium products are doing well on the Repository as well as on markets like Envato (where we became an Elite Author in 2018).
How does your company differentiate itself from the competition?
We don’t make deals with clients rather we build relationships. We keep up with the changes in technology and deliver the best to our clients. We never over-promise or under-deliver. We don’t make our life complicated with targets nor micro-manage the employees. We pick projects that challenge us and satisfy us. We try to make every day a celebration here.
What industries do you generally cater to? Are your customers repetitive? If yes, what ratio of clients has been repetitive to you?
We work mostly with design agencies around the world that serve global brands. They trust us with converting their beautiful designs to functional websites and apps.
We don’t have a marketing department nor do we do any marketing. 90% of our current clients have been with us for years (some of them have been with us since 2010!) or are referred to us by old clients. The rest come impressed by the fabulous company website we designed and developed in Frontity while locked in our houses thanks to the Coronavirus.
Please share some of the services that you offer for which clients approach you the most for?
We have made a name for ourselves in the world of WordPress. We have made several core contributions to this best-loved CMS of all times and have also developed some plugins that are doing very well. We are also very active in the community and sponsor and participate in WordCamps and Meetups.
We are also popular in the Frontity community. 2 of our works are case studies and we even developed a theme! Clients who want super-fast websites approach us for help.
We are not restricted to just these 2 technologies. We have delivered some eye-grabbing works on Ionic, React Native, PHP and Shopify.
What is your customer satisfaction rate according to you? What steps do you take to cater to your customer’s needs and requirements?
Our Mission is to serve the clients with not just web products but with an unforgettable experience of innovation and impeccable tools that would make a world of difference in their domain. I like to think that we have succeeded because not a single client has left us dissatisfied and some have been with us for decades.
We only take up those projects that we are sure of dedicating our hundred percent. There is no sense in signing up for projects that are outside of our skillset or when we are committed to delivering some other projects and have no resources to spare.
When it comes to providing support to our plugins, our Product team is impeccable. We refund our clients if they are not fully happy with our plugins. No questions asked.
What kind of support system do you offer to your clients for catering to their queries and issues?
I am personally involved with all the projects and we also have a dedicated Project Manager who is accessible at all times. Our clients can reach us via emails, phone/Skype/Zoom calls, or WhatsApp and can track the progress of their projects via ActiveCollab.
What kind of payment structure do you follow to bill your clients? Is it Pay per Feature, Fixed Cost, Pay per Milestone (could be in phases, months, versions etc.)
It varies across projects. But whatever we decide on, we ensure that our clients are perfectly onboard with it and have a clear picture of what to expect when and for how much.
Do you take in projects which meet your basic budget requirement? If yes, what is the minimum requirement? If no, on what minimum budget you have worked for?
There is no such minimum budget requirement. We take in projects depending on our resource availability and skillset. We don’t take up projects just based on money. We have delivered projects absolutely free of cost as part of our CSR.
What is the price range (min and max) of the projects that you catered to in 2020?
We were part of the do_action India 2020 initiative and developed 2 websites free of cost. Roughly speaking, I think we had handled projects ranging between $100 and $40000.
Where do you see your company in the next 10 years?
Our niche is WordPress. I hope to turn Awsm into a name that will be just right next to Automattic when it comes to WordPress. I want to be involved even more in the WordPress community, build more awesome plugins, and generally be the best when it comes to WordPress. I also want to see WP-Content.co becoming people’s best friend when it comes to learning WordPress or improving their skills.
I would love more than anything to keep our present culture intact and to still lead a small but powerful team. And ultimately live up to our philosophy - spread happiness.