Please introduce your company and give a brief about your role within the company?
I’m the founder & CEO of Tkxel - a software company with offices in Pakistan, Europe and US. Tkxel works with highly promising startups, SMBs and Fortune 100 companies. I also angel invest in startups globally. I am an electrical engineer and a computer science guy by education and an engineer turned into a management guy by function. However, at heart, I’m a teacher who loves to groom and mentor people.
What was the idea behind starting this organization?
The whole idea was to be the company, people turn to when they want quality and innovation in software; both as customers or employees. Also create solutions that help our customers grow and keep our teams challenged. Some of Tkxel’s core values include;
● Integrity
● Don’t settle, push yourself to improve every day.
● Deliver value to customers, peers and team members.
● Take Ownership.
● Share and Give back.
What is your company’s business model–in house team or third party vendors/ outsourcing?
Based on the projects and company’s needs, we follow a business model in which we provide companies dedicated resources who can work on-site or off-site as per requirement of the project to accelerate company’s software development. Sometimes, there is also a need of having a hybrid model where partially a project is carried out on-site and when the critical phase of the project is taken care of then the rest of the project is done off-site.
How is your business model beneficial from a value addition perspective to the clients compared to other companies' models?
Customer centricity is at our heart when we are working with our clients. During the whole project, we maintain a clear and transparent communication with the clients and provide them with a weekly scrum meeting so that every stakeholder is on the same page.
What industries do you generally cater to? Are your customers repetitive?
Tkxel loves to retain a long-term relationship with its clients and always welcomes a new as well as returning clients. Usually Tkxel works in Information Technology, Legal, Real Estate, Manufacturing, Retail, Healthcare & Medical, Telecommunications, ECommerce, Education etc.
Mention the objectives or the parameters critical in determining the time frame of developing software.
The timeframe of a software development project depends on the nature of the project, resource availability, specialized skills, team size, duration of the project and the tech stacks being used for the project.
How much effort in terms of time goes into developing the front end and back end of software?
The time spent in developing UI/UX of a software completely depends upon the project kind. Some projects are UI intensive which require a lot of effort on frontend side while others are executed just as backend services where no frontend is needed. For some projects it is an equal distribution.
What are the key parameters to be considered before selecting the right framework for developing software?
Over the time we have decided to use Agile Software Development framework for developing a software as it incorporates ongoing changes in the project.
Which languages & frameworks do you prefer to use in development of software?
The languages and frameworks for a software development totally depend on the type of software project. Usually, we use Python, Java Script, Ruby, .NET, Java, PHP, iOS, Android etc. for these projects.
What are the key factors that you consider before deciding the cost of software?
Before deciding the cost of a software, Tkxel sees if the resources for the particular project are available to take on this project. Apart from this, the delivery timeline of the project and the client budget is also important before deciding the cost of software.
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.)
There are two types of payment models we follow depending upon the type of projects:
- Fixed Price Model: If the project has clearly defined scope and requires fixed number of hours to be completed then we bill our clients on fixed price model where client pays a lump-sum of money at the project end.
- Hourly Billing: If the project does not have a clearly defined scope and needs modification along the we bill our clients for the number of hours our resources provided to the client.
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 do take in projects that meet the basic budget requirements. In 2018, we have worked for projects having budget of $10,000. But as our team has grown along with our client base, we updated our minimum budget criteria to $40,000.
What is the price range (min and max) of the projects that you catered to in 2018?
The minimum of the price range for the projects we did in 2018 was $10,000 and the maximum was $1,000,000. But now the minimum range has changed to $40,000.
