Please introduce your company and give a brief about your role within the company?
OTAKOYI is a full-cycle software development company offering a range of digital services, i.e. web and mobile development, UI and UX design, quality assurance and testing, Saas, API development etc.
As the CEO of the company, I am responsible for strategic planning and direction setting for the whole team. Along with it, I lead OTAKOYI’s sales department business growth endeavours aiming to broaden our partnership network.
What was the idea behind starting this organization?
OTAKOYI was founded by 5 enthusiastic young people in 2011. I remember us aiming to create interesting, profitable, and successful digital products that would not only possess a business value but would also look impressive and fascinating.
Today we, 5 co-founders, are very proud of the team we’ve built and the work we’ve done so far.
What is your company’s business model–in house team or third party vendors/ outsourcing?
In our work, we combine these two models, offering both outsourcing and dedicated team solutions as well as building digital products from scratch, in-house.
How is your business model beneficial from a value addition perspective to the clients compared to other companies' models?
As we cover the requirements of different business models, our clients can choose the variant that suits their needs best.
Being a result-oriented team of professionals, we aim at providing the most efficient solutions at a competitive price.
What industries do you generally cater to? Are your customers repetitive?
The main industries we work with are Real Estate, Education, Retail, Healthcare, Betting&Gambling, Media&Entertainment, eCommerce to name a few.
In fact, we don’t limit our performance by the industry and gain experience with every new project launched.
That is why OTAKOYI’s customers get back to us repetitively and recommend us to their business partners and friends.
Mention the objectives or the parameters critical in determining the time frame of developing a web app.
We take into account the complexity of the project, the required functionality, and the client’s budget.
We follow flexible business practices to meet our clients’ needs and abilities while analyzing each and every request and preparing estimations.
How much effort in terms of time goes into developing the front end and back end of a web app?
It really depends. There are so many aspects that influence the software development process - the team composition, design requirements, the functionality needed to be built, etc.
Each case is unique and we thoroughly investigate the client’s business and the industry market before start working on a project.
What are the key parameters to be considered before selecting the right platform for a web application?
It is crucial to consider a series of parameters before selecting the right platform - the goals that should be achieved with the application, the capacity needed, the timeframes outlined for the development, the platform’s usability, competitiveness and relevance to the modern digital requirements.
Which platform and technologies do you prefer to use in the development of your web apps?
Our developers have a diverse technical background so we use a number of platforms and technologies depending on the project.
Currently, we try to follow the latest digital trends using mostly React, Angular and Vue for front-end, Node.js and PHP frameworks (such as Laravel and Symphony) for back-end, React Native and Flutter for mobile development.
Do you offer website design templates or customized website design, and do you have a responsive website design?
We offer mostly customized website design as we have a team of skillful UI/UX and graphic designers in-house.
We like to create unique interfaces with usability in the first place.
Nevertheless, if the client’s budget or deadlines are limited, we consider the option of using design templates to reduce the cost and time spent on product development.
Which Content Management System do you prefer to use (Wordpress, Joomla, Drupal etc)?
We have a huge experience working with Wordpress and Asgard, as well as Magento and Opencart for eCommerce projects.
The CMS choice depends on the project complexity and the features needed to be implemented.
Do you provide website maintenance services?
Indeed we do. Flexible ongoing technical support and general maintenance are the key elements in long-term cooperation with our clients.
What are the key factors that you consider before deciding the cost of a web application?
We take into account dozens of parameters, including the clarity of business idea and initial requirements, the scope of work, timeframes, team composition,
technologies in use, etc.
Our business analysts and lead developers dig deep into the documentation and specifications to prepare a fair and compatible estimation for our clients and partners.
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.)
Fixed Cost and Time&Material models usually work the best for us. Still, we can adjust to some other payment structures offered by the client, if they are compatible with our company and country regulations.
We want to be flexible enough and the main goal is to prevent organizational issues influence the quality of our projects.
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?
Yes, we have minimum requirements (which are about $10k). However, the budget is not the only point for us to make a decision about cooperation.
We are trying to build a long-time partnership with our clients, and sometimes it means that we have to show our credibility with a really small project which will bring us to more profitable cooperation in the future.
Quite often we receive requests from the startups on the early stages that usually don't have big budget and investment yet, and can operate only their own funds.
In such cases, we are also trying to help our clients and start with some small MVP.
What is the price range (min and max) of the projects that you catered to in 2018?
Last year we catered to the projects in the price range of $15,000 and $200,000.
