Exclusive Interview with Rahul Sharma – CEO & Co-Founder, Appscrip on “Top App Firms”

In this exclusive interview, He shared his insights on outsourcing and several more things. Let’s check his success story and thoughts.

1. Please introduce your company and give a brief about your role within the company?

Appscrip evolved from years of experience making mobility solutions and being a tech solution provider for startups as 3Embed.

We soon realized that there was no specialized provider who can act as a technology partner for startups that are working on on-demand, social, discovery, messaging and shopping platforms and that brought about the whole idea that is APPSCRIP today.

We have identified the common denominator to help the end platform owners save time and money and allow them to focus on their core product. They can draw comfort from the fact that the underlying technology is already driving successful platforms around the world.

My company is Appscrip; I am the CEO & Co-founder of the company.

2. What was the idea behind starting this organization?

I have always been tinkering around with new ideas since my engineering days. I believed there was a lot of scope for quality software development services across the globe and strived to be the owner of a globally reputed brand that delivers such.

Appscript was an answer to the question I asked myself in my early 20’s “How do I deliver quality technology solutions at low cost, requiring low technology/resource overheads from a development standpoint?”

3. What are your company’s business model–in house team or third party vendors/ outsourcing?

Building a trust factor with clients and managing a team to deliver solutions across the globe is always a challenge in this industry. This is why I prefer to keep an in-house team(110+ members currently)

3. How is your business model beneficial from a value addition perspective to the clients compared to other companies' models?

Unlike your standard custom app or web development services, our business model revolves around creating robust business-ready technology solutions covering various industries and business niches that can be quickly tailored and deployed based on the client’s requirements.

This has definitely caught the attention of various enterprises and startups across the globe as:-

1) They get to test out a business-ready solution immediately as compared to having a development team make it from scratch and having to wait months to test out a working product. 2) These business-ready solutions need only minor customizations to be tailored to the client’s requirement. Hence, the clients are charged less for development and have their products deployed in the market much faster.

4. What industries do you generally cater to? Are your customers repetitive? If yes, what ratio of clients has been repetitive to you?

Our products cover a variety of industries and business niches such as transportation, shipping & logistics, courier services, food & hyperlocal deliveries, healthcare, chat & social media, dating & matchmaking, property & real estate, e-commerce, service booking, childcare, etc, to name a few. Around 25% of our customers are repetitive.

5. Mention the objectives or the parameters critical in determining the time frame of developing a mobile app.

Critical factors/questions would include:- - Does it align with our existing platforms or does it need to be custom-built? Percentage of custom development? - Complexity in terms of the tech ecosystem required. For example, consider developing an app for ride-hailing services requires various interlinked components such as a dispatcher, customer app, driver app, admin etc Vs building an app for social media use. - No. of members required from the in-house team and existing pipeline status.

6. How much effort in terms of time goes into developing the front end and back end of a mobile app?

Again this would depend on the nature of the app or business model. Let’s take the example of an Uber-like taxi app vs an Instagram-like social media app.

An Uber-like app requires seamless interlinking of components from the customer to the driver, dispatcher, and admin. The ‘look’ of this app is secondary as compared to making a robust and scalable ecosystem for the business to run on. Hence, more effort(60%) goes into the backend.

An Instagram-like app is successful only if users find the UI seamless, engaging and insightful. Hence, more effort would go into the front end in this case.

7. What are the key parameters to be considered before selecting the right platform for a mobile application?

Key factors according to me would include: - Budget - Time - Offline usage - UI/UX needed (as certain animations are not available cross-platform) - Whether the technology to be used is maintainable. Imagine having an app built on react native only to realize you don’t own any react native developers to maintain it in the long run.

8. Which platform do you suggest your clients begin with when they approach you with an idea (Android or iOS) and why?

In our case, we usually build both for the clients. However, if budgets are tight, I would provide recommendations based on experience. For example, The usage of Android as compared to iOS is stronger in India and the reverse in the USA. Although, there are more factors to consider as well such as industry, type of market, target audience, etc.

9. Android or iOS, Native or Hybrid — which platform is best to use to build your app? What are your recommendations?

Go native or react native if you can afford it. Otherwise, pick based on your business model, location and target audience.

10. What are the key factors that you consider before deciding the cost of a mobile application?

Similar to the time factor, the cost factor would depend on: - App ecosystem complexity - Resources required

11. 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.)

Pay per milestone. Although we do take a nominal commitment, in the beginning, our deliverables at each stage come with a working app. Thereby, maintaining the clients' trust at each stage.

12. 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?

We don’t go below $2000. However, for price-sensitive markets in Africa & Latin America, we offer unique pricing options such as white labelling, not providing the source code, app leasing, etc, to help entrepreneurs test out their ideas in their respective markets and focus more on the business without having to commit a large investment on technology development.

13. What is the price range (min and max) of the projects that you catered to in 2018?

$2000 - $200,000 USD is the price range of the projects we catered in 2018.

14. Which business model do you suggest to your clients enabling them to generate revenue from mobile applications? Why?

This would depend on the nature of the application. For example, if it was a social media-based app, then you could work with in-app purchases, rewarded videos or ads, etc. If the app was providing a service, then you could work on a commission basis based on each successful transaction or booking.