Please introduce your company and give a brief about your role within the company?
I graduated in B.Tech Computer Science in 2012, and then I started a job to gain experience. In 2015, I realized that the time has come and want to start a company of my own. So back in 2015, I started Wama Technology from my home as an e-commerce website Development Company. Gradually I rented a small office, hired 2 developers, and started working on web development and web designing. The company grew to focus on development as a service and then one after another, we kept on adding new services such as mobile app development, project consultancy, solution architect, and enterprise.
Since then, we have been able to create more than 100+ happy clients with more than 50+ end to end projects. Our key expertise includes idea to the solution with a stronghold in mobile apps, web development that caters to Enterprise, Start-ups, and Agencies.
Being the Founder, I have to strategize the company’s values and focus, values such as collaborative spirit with fellow colleagues, unrelenting dedication with clients, and expert thinking to challenges. At the same time, we focus on innovative, interactive, and interpretative. Having 70% of repeat business from existing clients says all about how closely we align with our clients. I have been blessed that since the start of the company, none of my employees has left the company and that makes us a proud place to work for all our employees.
What was the idea behind starting this organization?
Having the experience of working with clients, understanding their problem, and giving technical solutions, I started with e-commerce development as online shopping was gaining popularity, and many of the clients were looking for a transition from traditional business to online business. Having a team that can work on web development and web design, we catered more clients who want to show their presence to the world. We immediately started mobile app development as the smartphone era started. The core idea was to offer development services at a small scale to these clients, and later on, we scaled up to a larger organization.
What are your company’s business model–in house team or third party vendors/ outsourcing?
We do all of our work in-house. At present, we are serving 12 different technologies, having 25+ top quality and experienced developers hired around the country. They work like a lean start-up to compete with modern-day businesses for providing digital services globally.
We have partners in the USA and Europe; we work with them, and they represent us.
How is your business model beneficial from a value addition perspective to the clients compared to other companies' models?
We first understand client business, the purpose of development, and marketing strategy before we start working with them. This will help us establish good relations with clients, and we provide good inputs based on their needs. We work on client engagement model. Every project is unique and requires similar special services. Depending on the scope of the project, the timeline, and the team required, we deliver the solution. We propose a fixed price and scope model initially. In case the requirements evolve with time, we engage the required team on a month to month cycle and bill the client accordingly. The latter works out quite well for a long-term relationship.
What industries do you generally cater to? Are your customers repetitive? If yes, what ratio of clients has been repetitive to you?
Approximately 70% of our business comes through past clients. These clients belong to different industries – Security and Safety, Real Estate, Health Care, Digital Agencies, Tourism, Education, Social Networking, Fashion, Retail, to name a few.
Mention the objectives or the parameters critical in determining the time frame of developing a mobile app.
There’s an app for almost anything that you can think of. We believe that the use case where the app will be used, what are the targeted audience, where the app will create the highest impact, plays a vital role in determining the time frame. While every small feature that adds value to the target users is important, it is critical to identify the success factors and what key differentiation app brings to the target user. We make sure that we achieve the development within the estimated time frame, but that also depends on how well the scope of work is defined. And that’s what we aim to establish while scoping the project initially, during the requirement analysis phase. This helps us to define the estimated budget and timeframe with the right business model.
How much effort in terms of time goes into developing the front end and back end of a mobile app?
Almost everybody perceives the app from the front-end, the UI. However, the backend is crucial and important to top-notch user experience. For custom app development, the front-end takes 30% of the time, while backend and user experience require the rest of the development efforts. This could be less, in case third party API or SDK are used in the app.
What are the key parameters to be considered before selecting the right platform for a mobile application?
There are many things factored in choosing the right platform for mobile apps. The key parameters to choose the right platform are to understand who are the end-users, scalability that the client thinks, analyze usage patterns, and maximum impact on the app. This is a long process and not a lot many people are doing it. However, we have seen the budget constraint of a client. Many times, the client chooses the Android-First approach because of strong penetration in many countries and powerful devices.
Which platform do you suggest your clients, to begin with when they approach you with an idea (Android or iOS) and why?
I believe iOS is a better option as per development. They have a more closed ecosystem, and as a developer, we know the boundaries as well. Android, on the contrary, is open-source. It is easy to publish on google play, and that’s the reason many of the apps don’t really comply the google play standards. But we consider client end-user base, and whichever user-base is more, we suggest that to be developed first.
Android or iOS, Native or Hybrid — which platform is best to use to build your app? What are your recommendations?
We always believe native app development is stable, future-ready, and secured compared to the hybrid. Having said that, Hybrid has its own advantages, and there is nothing written on the stone which is to be used. This depends on the size of the app, integration with third-party, budget, security, and user experience.
What are the key factors that you consider before deciding the cost of a mobile application?
The scope of work, the complexity of the work, the time duration of the app, and the number of experts/employees required, are the major criteria in deciding the cost.
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.)
We have two models. The fixed-cost model is used where the payments are broken up into smaller installments referred to as Payment milestones, which are directly connected with the delivery milestones. The other is allowing the client to hire a dedicated team of experts who directly work with clients on a day-to-day basis; many times in their local time-zone as well. For dedicated teams, we charge per month - per resource flat fee.
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?
Generally speaking, we take projects worth more than $5000. But there is no hardcoded rule that we can’t break. We often work on projects that we believe are interesting; although smaller in size. We even take small projects that we know will be scalable in the future, but as of now, the client wants to do some basic market research before investing too much, ideally speaking, the MVP model.
What is the price range (min and max) of the projects that you catered to in 2018?
The average price for the projects we worked on in 2018 falls between $5k and $35k. However, a few of them are just the first version of the app/website. We eventually supported and continued support to them for further enhancement into the project, and now it has crossed the $100k as well.
Which business model do you suggest to your clients enabling them to generate revenue from mobile applications? Why?
There are two different perspectives that I have experienced. The first one is the Freemium app and selling content within the app. This should be focused on the niche market. Also, you need to keep on adding the content so that the user can buy it; for example, Netflix. The second is the social connecting app which keeps engaging the user, not only that, they engage user groups as well, like Instagram. There are few paid apps as well, but they give a free version with limited functionality and ask the user to purchase the premium app to enable more functionality. For example, image or video editing apps.