Kindly share your feedback on how Goodfirms has been doing so far in increasing your visibility among potential clients.
Goodfirms is a promising platform, letting potential customers connect with companies that match their vision and culture from across the globe. Listing here has definitely helped increase our visibility and I’m excited about all we can achieve, together.
Please introduce your company and give a brief about your role within the organization.
Cobold Digital specializes in creating digital products and experiences to drive business growth. I started out in 2011 and built up incrementally to a fledgling organization that now handles website design & development, mobile app development, DevOps, UI/UX design, digital marketing, technology strategy & consulting and much more.
At Cobold Digital, we are deeply aware of our responsibility to bring about positive change through our work and so partner with businesses of all sizes - SMBs, Startups and Large Enterprises.
As the Principal Partner, in addition to ensuring a strategic vision and keeping everyone on the right track, I see my role as a facilitator of growth, for both clients and employees. Their growth automatically translates to growth for the company.
What is the story behind starting this company?
The demand gap was obvious. With so many companies crowding the market, it was clear that the way the business is done needed an overhaul. Web and digital products were overpriced, the quality was low, and the post-delivery service was appalling. This is the gap we fill.
We help companies on their digital journey and transform businesses with cloud-first technology solutions. We do this by staying within budget, and by focusing on customer delight for our global client base.
The post-pandemic business landscape has proved even more of a motivation to press on with this goal as more and more businesses embrace the digital dream of connecting with customers across geographies and languages.
What are your company’s business model–in house team or third party vendors/ outsourcing?
Proudly, 100% in-house. Our talent pool is exceptional, and the work culture, to put it simply, is all about fostering a good place to work. We work hard, but we’re never hard to work with.
With our focused team, we can tap into the advantage of open communications. This means that our teams aren’t working in their own silos, cut off from each other. We interact optimally to meet and exceed client expectations.
How does your company differentiate itself from the competition?
At Cobold, we’re not just service centric, our process is client centric.
Right from the discovery phase, we take a collaborative approach, where the client becomes our partner in the development journey and isn’t shut out from any part of the process that they want a greater say in.
No two projects or clients are the same, this is why we employ agile processes that can quickly be improvised to fit each client’s unique requirements. We do this to nurture long term relationships with our global clients since only the best can survive in this highly competitive market.
Add to this a fast pace of project delivery, and great talent that works together to bring smiles to our customers’ faces, and there you have our differentiation.
What industries do you generally cater to? Are your customers repetitive? If yes, what ratio of clients has been repetitive to you?
We are immensely glad to acknowledge that nearly all of our clients stay with us. Their trust means the world. Infact, it is this circle of client-advocates that has powered our growth till now.
We actively seek out new business, since we’re relatively new and are growth driven, but 70% of our work comes from existing clients or clients who have worked with us in the past. Our clients belong to different industries, so we can safely say we’ve worked with almost all business verticals, from manufacturing, real estate, finance, e-commerce, travel and retail to more novel projects for the EdTech, pet care and even spiritual wellness industries.
Please share some of the services that you offer for which clients approach you the most for?
For the last year or so? We’ve been handling requests for website design and development, in addition to upgrading legacy websites to modernize their functionality and appeal - especially to target the international markets. Upgrading websites to make them Mobile-devices friendly is also a popular element in our portfolio.
Technology consultancy to solve unusual problems using digital tools is gaining traction in the market, now that companies want to digitize so badly but at the same time prefer to modernize their business in planned steps rather than undertake a complete IT overhaul.
Application development has always been our mainstay, both web and mobile apps, and its adoption has only accelerated.
What is your customer satisfaction rate according to you? What steps do you take to cater to your customer’s needs and requirements?
Our reviews speak for themselves. For the last 1 year, we’ve taken an active approach towards gathering feedback and reviews on projects from our clients. I am happy to report that our average rating across platforms is 4.65/5. On Goodfirms it is a 100%.
This is not by chance, at Cobold, customers are at the heart of everything. Right from the start, we take the initiative of decoding the customer’s needs and translating these into achievable, measurable goals. We also ensure active participation of the client in our development process and always keep an active communication channel during projects.
Our robust processes mean that we save effort and time while we also accept that iterations are a part of delighting our customers.
What kind of support system do you offer to your clients for catering to their queries and issues?
I am personally involved in this part of the business. It’s an unyielding priority for me.
Also, there is a specific project head for every client. A single point of contact lets our clients focus their communication and provides clear accountability.
Post go-live of any project (once the project is handed over to the client), we offer a 60 days complimentary maintenance period where we take care of all small feedback that may be received when our client’s stakeholders and customers view the outcome. This really helps cement our relationship with the client for the very long term.
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.)
As I said before, we’re customer centric and flexible. This is also true of our billing process.
Fortnightly or monthly invoicing, fixed price payment structure or payments based on pre-defined milestones, we are comfortable with whichever works for the client.
Payments are defined by the time and resources needed for each project and we also provide attractive maintenance packages and retainers to our existing clients.
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?
More than the budget, we’re interested in impact.
If it’s something that we haven’t worked on before, of course we’ll need to analyze the pricing to ensure that developing the talent in-house is sustainable.
Budget isn’t the most pressing factor, however, when we decide the viability of projects. Also, developing prototypes is an effective way we strike a balance between price and resources, and it ensures a win-win outcome.
What is the price range (min and max) of the projects that you catered to in 2020?
2020 was a, let’s say, peculiar year. There were a lot of challenges and paradoxically a lot of growth.
The deviation in the price band of the projects we worked on was extreme, from $1875 (a tiny deliverable for an existing client) to a figure like $50,000 for an app built from the ground up on a project lasting close to 8 months.
But if I need to give you an average price, it would be from $8,000-$14,000.
Where do you see your company in the next 10 years?
Wow! With disruptive technology now changing the business landscape every few months, that’s a long timeline.
Of course, growing into a 350-400 employee strong organization is important, but what I’ll weigh success against is the impact Cobold Digital achieves. Is the work we do extraordinary, does it make our society a better place? This is the most critical aspect of the business to me. Because without it, we’ll soon just be another face in a pressing crowd of ordinaries.