Please introduce your company and give a brief about your role within the company?
Nine Hertz India Pvt. Ltd. was established in early 2008, the company was started with highly creative and competent young professionals with the aim to generate huge business volumes by harnessing the power of Web and technology. Our prime motto is to deliver the needs of tomorrow within today. We are a team of young, talented, highly qualified, well-groomed engineers who are self-motivated offering quality & high definition results to our clients. We are one of the most promising & fastest growing Web and Mobile App Development Companies all over India whose foundation is laid on maximizing business with minimum resources. Our principle is to engage into an environment, which creates space for maximum creativity as to yield profitable collaborations between our clients and us.
My role within the organization is to make sure client requirements are well understood. I try to make myself available during all the initial project discussion calls to make sure our team has a clear understanding of what has to be delivered at the end of the day.
It’s in the best interest of the team as well as the client to make sure there is no air left between their mutual understandings of the project. Thus, my role is to bridge the gap between client and the team through requirement analysis, feasibility study and suggesting suitable technology stack.
What was the idea behind starting this organization?
The idea was simply to contribute towards a better tomorrow. There is an ever increasing need of mobile solutions, be it an individual or a company mobility solution. The mobile app is a gateway towards revenue proliferation and reaching target audiences for offering their products or services. Nine Hertz was established envisioning becoming a one-stop shop for such business needs.
What is your company’s business model–in house team or third party vendors/ outsourcing?
We strictly follow in house team model, for the simple reason that successful product delivery is an outcome of constant and fast communication, whether it is internal i.e within a team or it is with the client. Having in-house team ensures best possible communication internally and hence its outcome is well reflected as utmost client satisfaction which otherwise would be compromised.
How is your business model beneficial from a value addition perspective to the clients compared to other companies' models?
Our business model as explained above is having an in-house team for all sort of projects our sales team brings in. Besides following usual practices of effective project management through project management tools, the value addition would be my involvement with each and every project, it’s my sincere attempt to make sure client remains in their comfort zone while we are developing the project for them.
What industries do you generally cater to? Are your customers repetitive? If yes, what ratio of clients has been repetitive to you?
Although there is no such cap for which all industries we are willing to work for or we have worked in past, still I would put forth e-commerce, Social networking and message as my top 3 picks for recent successful accomplishments in terms of domain presence. Other industries would be food ordering and restaurants, gaming (2d/3d), utility, live streaming, and education.
Yes, we do have tie-ups with some offshore companies and they do outsource their volumes. In terms of ratio, it would be 60:40, 60 for exploring opportunities with new potential clients and 40 for repeat business.
Mention the objectives or the parameters critical in determining the time frame of developing a mobile app.
The time frame required would be decided depending upon few variables such as requirement documentation which means do we have all the requirements listed in a document, in case we do not have enough information available, we’ll ask the client to provide us with such document. The second factor is the wireframe availability; if it’s already present with the client then it significantly reduces the time to deliver the initial mock-ups of the application. The third factor is our experience of developing the similar project before. If we have done the same kind of project previously, it becomes easy for us to develop as the code base is available with us. Basically, this saves our time and other resources. The fourth factor is technology preference and depth of analytics required by a client. Technology stack preference plays a vital role in determining the time duration. In order to fulfill their requirements, we need to keep up with the current technological advancements which rule out the use of traditional SQL databases with No SQL databases in order to ensure the seamless performance of applications.
How much effort in terms of time goes into developing the front end and back end of a mobile app?
We cannot precisely differentiate the time incurred into developing front end and back-end as it is subject to the requirements of the client. There might be very less part of the front end as compared to the algorithms need to be programmed for the back-end in order to support the front end. Just to share an example, an App like Uber has only fewer screens at the front end but its back-end part would be highly complex where they need to maintain the drivers and requests matrix.
In a nutshell, the time difference between front end and back-end development is not something which will remain constant for any type of project.
What are the key parameters to be considered before selecting the right platform for a mobile application?
There are several parameters to be taken into account before selecting the right platform for a mobile application development. The first one is; the purpose of the app. If it’s an App for an internal use of a company, maybe for their employees where they themselves might be providing the devices to their employees, then Android App is preferred over iOS app as it reduces the cost. The second element is the target market; in case the target market is iOS dominant, it’s better to go for iOS platform rather than Android. In order to ensure maximum reach of users, it’s always advisable to go for both the platforms simultaneously or at least one after the other.
Which platform do you suggest your clients to begin with when they approach you with an idea (Android or iOS) and why?
Again, selection of the platform would be an outcome of above-mentioned parameters which are the purpose of the app and target market. Essentially, these would be the major factors contributing towards the selection of the platform.
Android or iOS, Native or Hybrid — which platform is best to use to build your app? What are your recommendations?
If in case user interface and an excellent app performance are not as much priority and also considering that the app would be for few users and has to be utilized for internal operations, our suggestion to the client would be hybrid app. This will save the time and development cost and at the same time, it will not compromise the primary needs of the client. The hybrid platform will also offer easy maintenance of the apps.
At the same time, if a client intends to launch the application worldwide, we would recommend native platform as it is better in terms of accessibility and overall look of the app.
What are the key factors that you consider before deciding the cost of a mobile application?
The concept of the client’s requirements will determine the cost of development of the mobile application. If the concept is similar and relevant to our previous accomplishments it costs a little lesser and if it’s different that requires detailed planning, research, and efforts that surely costs higher. The selection of the platform will also help us determine the time frame and which will ultimately define the cost of the project. Other factors deciding the cost of a mobile application are a device for which the application has to be developed; whether it is a phone, tablet or iPad. Integration points or the third party integration is yet another factor that affects the cost of the overall app development. Integration Points makes the development process swift but eventually increases the overall cost of the development.
What kind of payment structure do you follow to bill your clients? Is it Pay per Feature, Fixed Cost, Pay per Milestone
We are highly flexible when it comes to cost management. However, the cost structure is defined and depends majorly on the status of the app. For instance, if the app is just a vision and it needs to be starting off from the scratch then, we prefer an hourly based model. In the case of Hourly packages, we appoint a tracker allowing the seamless track to the entire process each hour and generate bills for the hours consumed on per week basis. Another prominent option is fixed cost, this keeps the clients’ calm at ease as he is not required to pay for hours in which no progress is visualized. In the fixed cost development, the entire cost is bifurcated into multiple milestones and with the progress in the project, the invoice is generated for the payment. Once the milestone is completed, tested internally by the team and by the client as well, we request the release of the amount associated. So basically, when the scope of work is defined, we recommend fixed cost model and when the scope is not defined clearly, we go for hourly payment plans.
Do you take in projects which meet your basic budget requirement? What is the minimum requirement?
We can take the project with as minimum as a 2 weeks’ job costing USD 1200.
What is the price range (min and max) of the projects that you catered to in 2016?
We are supporting start-ups and thus we have worked upon projects starting with as minimum as USD 1200 to USD 210,000+ last in the year 2016.
Which business model do you suggest to your clients enabling them to generate revenue from mobile applications? Why?
We encourage our client to put forth their ideas and we see if we can add in our suggestions to make the idea go more renowned. The models that we advise our clients from ROI standpoint are Freemium, in-app advertising and video advertising.
