The journey of entrepreneurship is often likened to a roller coaster ride, filled with exhilarating highs and challenging lows. One of the most daunting challenges faced by aspiring entrepreneurs is securing the initial capital to turn their innovative ideas into viable businesses. This is where seed funding emerges as a critical catalyst for startup success. In this comprehensive guide, we will delve deep into the world of seed funding, unraveling its nuances, and exploring how it can kickstart your entrepreneurial dreams.

Key Points:

  • Seed funding is the first pivotal stage of investment for startups.
  • It provides the much-needed capital to initiate business operations and product development.
  • Equity in the company is exchanged for financial support, aligning investor and entrepreneur interests.

What is Seed Funding?

Seed funding, also known as seed capital or seed money, represents the initial infusion of capital that startups receive to set their wheels in motion. It serves as the foundational financial support that enables entrepreneurs to breathe life into their visions, develop cutting-edge products or services, and ignite their entrepreneurial journey. In exchange for this crucial funding, startups offer equity shares to their investors, aligning their interests in the company’s growth and prosperity.

Types of Seed Funding

There are various types of seed funding sources and methods, each with its own characteristics and requirements. Here are some common types of seed funding:

Equity Financing

Equity financing involves exchanging ownership shares or equity in the company for capital. This type of seed funding is common among startups and allows investors to become partial owners of the business. Equity financing is a long-term investment, and investors share in the company’s profits and losses.

Convertible Notes

Convertible notes, also known as convertible debt, are loans provided to startups with the option to convert the debt into equity at a later stage. This type of seed funding offers flexibility to both the startup and the investor. If the startup succeeds, the investor can convert the debt into equity, and if not, they can seek repayment.

Crowdfunding

Crowdfunding has gained immense popularity in recent years. It involves raising small amounts of money from a large number of individuals, typically through online platforms. Crowdfunding allows startups to access capital while also building a community of supporters and potential customers.

Angel Investors

Angel investors are high-net-worth individuals who invest their personal funds into startups in exchange for equity. They often provide not only capital but also valuable mentorship and networking opportunities. Angel investors play a crucial role in nurturing early-stage companies.

Venture Capital

Venture capital (VC) firms are professional investment organizations that provide funding to startups in exchange for equity. VC funding is usually sought by startups with significant growth potential. Venture capitalists are known for their strategic guidance and involvement in the companies they invest in.

Comparison of Seed Funding Types

To help you understand the differences between these types of seed funding, let’s compare them in terms of key factors:

FactorEquity FinancingConvertible NotesCrowdfundingAngel InvestorsVenture Capital
OwnershipPartialPotentialN/APartialPartial
RepaymentNo repaymentOptionalNo repaymentNo repaymentNo repayment
Investor InvolvementVariedLimitedLimitedHighHigh
Funding AmountVariesVariesVariesVariesLarge
Time to Access FundsModerateQuickModerateModerateModerate
Source of FundsInvestorsInvestorsCrowdIndividualInvestment Firm

Why Is Seed Funding Important?

Securing seed funding is crucial for several reasons:

1. Validation of Concept

Seed funding allows entrepreneurs to validate their business ideas and concepts in a real-world setting. It provides the financial support needed to turn abstract ideas into tangible products or services, proving their viability in the market.

2. Accelerated Growth

With seed funding, startups can scale and grow more rapidly than they would without it. This financial boost enables them to hire key personnel, invest in marketing, and expand their operations.

3. Access to Expertise

Investors who provide seed funding often bring valuable industry expertise and networks to the table. This mentorship and guidance can be instrumental in steering the startup toward success.

4. Product Development

Seed funding is crucial for developing a prototype or MVP. This working model can be used to attract further funding and refine the product based on real user feedback.

5. Marketing and Expansion

Seed funding can be allocated to marketing efforts, helping startups reach a wider audience and gain a competitive edge. It also facilitates geographic or market expansion.

How Does Seed Funding Work?

Seed funding operates within a structured framework involving several key stages:

Finding Investors

Finding the right investors for your startup is the first step in the seed funding process. Look for individuals or organizations that have an interest in your industry and a history of supporting early-stage companies. Networking events, online platforms, and even angel investor groups can be valuable resources in your search.

Pitching Your Idea

Once you’ve identified potential investors, it’s time to pitch your startup idea to them. Your pitch should be concise, and compelling, and highlight the unique value proposition of your business. Make sure to clearly articulate how their investment will contribute to your success.

Due Diligence

Investors will conduct due diligence to assess the feasibility and potential risks of your venture. Be prepared to provide them with detailed information about your business plan, financial projections, and market research. Transparency is key during this phase.

Negotiating Terms

Negotiating the terms of the investment is a critical step. This includes determining the valuation of your startup, the percentage of equity you’re willing to offer, and any specific conditions or expectations from the investor. Seek legal counsel to ensure a fair deal.

Closing the Deal

Once both parties agree on the terms, it’s time to close the deal. This involves legal documentation, the transfer of funds, and the formalization of the investor’s role in your startup. Celebrate this milestone as you prepare to take your business to the next level.

Key Players in Seed Funding

Several essential stakeholders are integral to the seed funding ecosystem:

  1. Angel Investors: These high-net-worth individuals invest their personal capital in startups in exchange for equity. They often bring invaluable industry knowledge and mentorship.
  2. Venture Capitalists: Venture capital firms pool funds from diverse sources, such as corporations, pension funds, and affluent individuals. They seek high-growth potential startups for investment.
  3. Crowdfunding Platforms: Online platforms like Kickstarter and Indiegogo allow a multitude of individuals to contribute small amounts of money to a startup in exchange for rewards or equity.
  4. Incubators and Accelerators: These organizations provide startups with a nurturing environment, mentorship, and resources in return for equity or a stake in the company.

Key Points:

  • Angel investors, venture capitalists, crowdfunding platforms, and incubators play pivotal roles in the seed funding landscape.
  • Each category of investor may have distinct investment criteria and expectations.

Benefits of Seed Funding

Now that we understand what is seed funding how it works and the importance of seed funding, let’s delve deeper into its key benefits:

Accelerated Growth

Seed funding provides the financial injection necessary for startups to grow quickly. This capital allows companies to hire the right talent, invest in infrastructure, and take their products or services to market faster.

Access to Expertise

Investors who provide seed funding often bring more than just money to the table. They offer valuable industry knowledge, experience, and connections. This mentorship can guide startups through challenges and help them make informed decisions.

Validation of Concept

Securing seed funding is a strong validation of your startup’s concept. It indicates that investors believe in your idea and are willing to invest in its success. This validation can boost your credibility in the eyes of future investors and customers.

Product Development

Seed funding allows startups to develop a working prototype or MVP. This is a critical step in refining the product based on user feedback and attracting further investment.

Marketing and Expansion

With seed funding, startups can allocate resources to marketing efforts, enabling them to reach a larger audience and gain a competitive edge. It also provides the means for geographic or market expansion, helping startups grow their customer base.

Challenges and Risks of Seed Funding

Seed funding is an essential stage in the life cycle of many startups, providing the initial capital needed to turn innovative ideas into viable businesses. However, like any stage of financing, seed funding comes with its own set of challenges and risks. Here are some of the key challenges and risks associated with seed funding:

Limited Capital:

Seed funding typically provides startups with a relatively small amount of capital compared to later funding rounds. This limited capital can be a challenge for startups with ambitious growth plans, as it may not be sufficient to cover all expenses or execute their vision.

Uncertain Valuation:

Valuing a startup at the seed stage can be challenging, as there may be limited or no revenue to base the valuation on. This uncertainty can lead to disagreements between founders and investors, potentially causing delays or even deal breakages.

Lack of Track Record:

Startups at the seed stage often lack a proven track record of success. This can make it difficult to attract investors, as they may be hesitant to invest in unproven concepts or teams.

High Risk of Failure:

Seed-stage startups are inherently risky. Many startups fail at this stage due to market uncertainties, product-market fit issues, or other challenges. Investors are well aware of this risk and may demand significant equity in exchange for their investment.

Limited Resources:

Startups at the seed stage typically have limited resources, including personnel and infrastructure. This can make it challenging to execute their business plans effectively and compete in the market.

Founder Dilution:

To secure seed funding, founders often have to give up a significant portion of their equity. This dilution can reduce their ownership stake and control over the company, which may be a concern for some entrepreneurs.

Market Validation:

One of the primary objectives of seed funding is to validate the market demand for a product or service. If the market doesn’t respond as expected, it can be challenging to secure additional funding in later stages.

Investor Expectations:

Seed investors may have different expectations regarding the growth and direction of the startup. Managing these expectations and aligning them with the founders’ vision can be a challenge.

Competitive Landscape:

Startups often face competition from other businesses, including well-established players and other startups. Navigating a competitive landscape can be challenging, especially with limited resources.

Legal and Regulatory Risks:

Startups may face legal and regulatory challenges that can impact their operations or require costly compliance measures.

Exit Strategy:

Seed investors often expect an exit strategy, such as acquisition or going public, to provide returns on their investment. Developing and executing a viable exit strategy can be complex and uncertain.

Market Timing:

The timing of market entry can be critical to a startup’s success. Entering a market too early or too late can pose significant risks.

Despite these challenges and risks, seed funding remains a crucial step for many startups, providing them with the financial support needed to prove their concept and attract further investment. Success at the seed stage can open doors to additional funding rounds and long-term growth opportunities. Entrepreneurs and investors alike must carefully assess these challenges and risks and work together to mitigate them to increase the chances of a successful seed-funded startup.

FAQs About Seed Funding

Q1: What is the typical amount of seed funding a startup receives?

A1: The quantum of seed funding a startup secures can vary significantly based on factors such as the industry, geographical location, and the comprehensiveness of the business plan. On average, seed funding rounds range from as low as $10,000 to as high as $2 million.

Q2: Is seed funding mandatory for all startups?

A2: Seed funding is not a universal prerequisite for startups. Some entrepreneurs opt to bootstrap their businesses, relying on personal savings and revenue generation to fund their operations and growth.

Q3: How can I connect with angel investors or venture capitalists for seed funding?

A3: Networking events, startup incubators, and online platforms like AngelList provide valuable avenues to connect with potential seed investors. Building relationships and showcasing your business proposition are crucial steps in attracting investors.

Q4: What percentage of equity should I offer to seed investors?

A4: The equity stake offered to seed investors can vary widely and depends on factors like the startup’s valuation, funding requirements, and investor expectations. Typically, seed investors may acquire equity stakes ranging from 10% to 25%.

Q5: Is seed funding taxable income for my startup?

A5: Seed funding is generally not categorized as taxable income for startups. Instead, it is viewed as an investment in the business and not treated as revenue.

Q6: How can I find seed funding for my startup?

A1: Finding seed funding involves networking, crafting a compelling pitch, and connecting with angel investors or venture capitalists who specialize in your industry. Don’t forget to leverage online platforms like Upwork, where you can find experts to help you with your pitch and business plan.

Q7: Is seed funding only for tech startups?

A2: While seed funding is commonly associated with tech startups, it is available to startups in various industries. The key is to demonstrate your idea’s potential for growth and profitability.

Q8: What should I include in my pitch to attract seed investors?

A3: Your pitch should include a clear problem statement, a unique solution, a strong team, market research, financial projections, and a well-thought-out business plan.

Conclusion

Seed funding is the lifeblood of many successful startups. It provides the financial support and resources needed to turn entrepreneurial dreams into reality. Whether you’re an aspiring entrepreneur seeking funding or an investor looking to support innovative ideas, seed funding offers a mutually beneficial path to growth and success.

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Are you eager to unlock the full potential of your startup? Whether you’re in need of app and web development for your startup, expert guidance, or simply want to hire talented developers to work on your ideas, GraffersID is here to assist you every step of the way.

Have you ever wondered why global giants like Google and Microsoft are led by Indian personalities like Sundar Pichai and Satya Nadela? And, Why Outsourcing Software Development Projects or hiring an offshore development Team in India is a Success? We will unravel the mystery right here.

No doubt, favorable government policies, and a superior work ethic make India one of the preferred destinations for outsourcing. But, this is not all when it comes to outsourcing development to India or establishing an outsourcing team in India. The crucial reason why India is becoming the top choice for outsourcing software development is the availability of resources in abundance.

Apart from lower cost and easy accessibility, the sheer volume of Engineers that India produces every year accounts for more than 1.5 Million. According to the World Economic Forum, India produces 3X the number of Engineers produced in Europe and the USA combined. 1.5 million Engineers produced every year give rise to an unmatched talent pool that can serve N number of Software development projects every year.

Why is India the preferred destination for outsourcing software development?

India’s market share in the global services outsourcing industry is 56% which is the highest in the world. The present revenue of the Indian IT industry is above $150 billion, and it aims to touch a gigantic $350 Billion in revenue by 2025. Also, India still leads in terms of software developer base and has the fastest-growing concentration of software developers in the world.

The above stats make it obvious why India is the preferred choice for outsourcing your projects.

With demand comes supply, and when it comes to software development companies in India that enable you to hire dedicated remote developers, there are a plethora of options. Hence, is tedious to decide which are the best offshore software development outsourcing companies where you can put your money. Here is all you need to know about setting up the offshore development center.

Now let us understand this in detail with simple points as to why India is a preferred outsourcing destination and what makes India stand out globally.

Read Also: Hire Dedicated Developers 

1. Whopping 1.5 Million Engineers:

It would not be wrong to say that IT engineers and India go hand in hand. Around 0.5 million software graduates are employed by India-based IT companies every year which results in 98% of young and skilled developers in the age bracket of 18-35. With such an enormous size of talent pool catering to the software development requirements become easy.

Hiring resources from India not only resolve your software development issues but also reduce the project management burden from your shoulder. Top outsourcing companies in India have project managers who hold hands-on experience in dealing with end-to-end design development and offering clients with QA testing.

When you sign up with India for your software development projects you are in for a complete 360-degree experience.

2. Cost-effective

Software development cost is the cheapest in India as compared to other global countries. This is a well-established fact for many years but the cheap price does not mean any compromise on quality. What’s interesting here is that in recent years the cost-to-quality ratio stands in equilibrium.

So exactly how much does it cost?

Hourly Rates quoted by a top outsourcing software development company in India start as low as 12 $ per hour.

Say, a React-based project requires at least three developers. Now let’s understand how this project can be managed in India on a low budget. Most companies in India will distribute the React project in a hierarchy of 1 senior developer, 1 junior developer, and 1 Intern. Since the wages In India are very low as compared to the US/Europe it becomes easier for companies to distribute the cost. Quality is not compromised as the most complex task is taken by the senior developer and the regular task which doesn’t require much expertise is distributed to the Junior Developer with the supervision of the project manager.

This cost reduction helps the companies to cut down the hiring and infrastructure cost as they don’t have to worry about all this while outsourcing software development to India.

Read Also: Hire Temporary Remote Developers

3. Strong Communication skills:

India is the second-largest English-speaking country in the world second to only the United States, which gives you an idea about the language proficiency of the country. Right from kindergarten until the time a student graduates the medium of communication is strictly English in several schools and colleges in the country.

India was recently ranked second in English proficiency by the EF English Proficiency Index. Companies look for developers with fluent spoken and written English skills as the IT industry across the globe operate in one single language. Several companies already started choosing India as an outsourcing partner without facing communication challenges.

This kind of command and application over a foreign language in a country is truly remarkable, and that’s why over the years people have trusted India as a one-stop solution to global outsourcing problems, especially software development.

4. Friendly time difference with Europe/Asia/United States.

India has got a competitive advantage even when it comes to location with countries that are looking to outsource software development projects. The time difference of :

  • India is 3 hours 30 Minutes ahead of Eastern Europe and 9 hours 30 Minutes ahead of the USA
  • Singapore is 2 hours 30 Minutes ahead of India
  • Australia is 4 hours 30 Minutes ahead of India

With this time zone difference, Indian companies provide round-the-clock support and turnaround time for catering to project development needs.

As along with cost, time plays an important role and acts as a competitive advantage for companies working round the clock and wanting sync-ups and conference calls.

It is also advantageous for companies who are looking for both in-house as well as an offshore team to work together in such a situation time plays a vital role.

Want to Outsource software development to India? Consult us 

India: The Global Software Development Hub

India has emerged as a global leader in the software development industry. It has garnered a reputation for excellence, reliability, and innovation. Here’s why India is the go-to destination for software outsourcing:

  • Skilled Workforce

India’s education system produces a vast number of IT graduates every year. This ensures a steady supply of highly skilled developers, programmers, and engineers.

  • English Proficiency

English is widely spoken in India, making communication seamless for international clients. Effective communication is crucial in software development projects, and India excels in this aspect.

  • Time Zone Advantage

India’s time zone is strategically positioned to overlap with both European and American working hours. This facilitates real-time collaboration and faster project turnaround.

Benefits of Outsourcing to India

Outsourcing software development to India offers a multitude of advantages that contribute to its success. Let’s explore some of these benefits:

  • Cost-Effective Solutions

As mentioned earlier, cost savings are a significant benefit. Indian firms offer competitive rates without compromising on quality, making it a cost-effective choice for businesses of all sizes.

  • Quality Assurance

Indian software development companies adhere to international quality standards and best practices. They prioritize delivering error-free and reliable software solutions.

  • Scalability

India’s vast talent pool allows for easy scalability. Whether your project requires a small team or a large workforce, you can quickly find the right resources.

  • Technological Expertise

Indian developers are proficient in a wide range of technologies, from web and mobile app development to artificial intelligence and blockchain. This expertise ensures that your project is in capable hands.

How to Choose the Right Indian Software Development Partner

Selecting the right partner is crucial for a successful outsourcing experience. Here’s a step-by-step guide to help you make the best choice:

  • Define Your Requirements

Clearly outline your project’s objectives, scope, and requirements. This will help potential partners understand your needs better.

  • Research and Shortlist

Conduct thorough research to identify reputable Indian software development companies. Seek recommendations, read reviews, and assess their portfolios.

  • Evaluate Expertise

Evaluate the expertise of the shortlisted firms. Ensure they have experience in your industry and the technologies relevant to your project.

  • Communication and Collaboration

Effective communication is key to project success. Choose a partner with strong communication skills and a willingness to collaborate closely with your team.

  • Cost and Contracts

Request detailed proposals and compare costs. Pay attention to contract terms, including pricing, timelines, and intellectual property rights.

FAQs about Outsourcing Software Development to India

1. Is India a safe choice for outsourcing software development?

Absolutely. India has a proven track record of delivering secure and reliable software solutions. With stringent data protection laws and a commitment to cybersecurity, your project is in safe hands.

2. How can I ensure effective communication with my Indian development team?

Most Indian developers are fluent in English, ensuring smooth communication. Additionally, you can use collaboration tools and regular video meetings to bridge any communication gaps.

3. What industries benefit the most from outsourcing to India?

India caters to a wide range of industries, including healthcare, finance, e-commerce, and more. The versatility of Indian software development companies makes them suitable for almost any sector.

Conclusion

When it comes to outsourcing IT projects, India has the upper hand with almost 70% of the revenue of the company coming from the export of IT services. This contributes to around 7.2 percent of the country’s GDP.

If software development is not your competency and you want to thrive in the IT segment, then India is the best option to outsource your IT project. Hiring India will free your money, energy, and time, along with ensuring world-class development solutions at the same time.

Outsourcing web applications have helped many small companies in accomplishing major objective and achieving success. In addition to this, partnering with software outsourcing companies also opens up a new environment to upscale the business.

Outsourcing web development in India means less investment, exposure to the latest technology, lesser project complexity, unwavering support, and top-notch services.

A hiring software developer is a daunting task, and it has become more intimidating amid Corona times. Earlier, you have to write down answers to queries like what is the vision of your company, what are the current projects that you have in hand, what is the hiring budget, and so on. One more dilemma that every entrepreneur and business faces while hiring developers is between in-house and remote developers.

In such a situation where the world is fighting with coronavirus pandemic, and cities are locking down, having remote developers is the best backup plan. Setting up a remote development team in countries like India, which have managed to keep Corona in control so far would be the right option to keep your productivity intact. India with 192 cases, has already adopted all the precautionary measures to prevent Italy-like situations.

Apart from the lowest number of Corona cases among other countries, India also has experienced and skilled resources when it comes to web and mobile app development. With a whopping 10, 345 Engineering colleges across the country, India accounts for 2.2 million skilled IT professionals. Moreover, the pool of these IT professionals is English-speaking, which is a major boon.

Which is Cheaper: Hiring in-house developers or remote developers

The image can help you compare the expenses you have to bear while hiring in-house developers in the USA or the UK and the salary that you will be paying to remote developers in India.

Costs of Hiring an In-house Team?

Salary of Developer

According to the App Association, the average salary of a software developer is around $100,000 per year. Multiply that by the number of people you want to add to your team.

Other Associated Costs

Apart from the salary, there are a lot of other costs associated with having an in-house team. Have a look:

  1. Recruiting Expenses:

This will include having an in-house recruitment team or outsourcing this task to recruiting agencies.

  1. Employment Taxes:

Employment salary varies depending upon the industry and various other factors. This will include workmen’s compensation premium depending on the category of your employee.

  1. Benefits:

Basic salary and employment taxes are minimal in most of cases you are also required to provide some benefits. Typical benefits for a $50,000 salaried employee cover life insurance and health coverage. Other benefits could include long-term disability insurance, dependent care assistance, tuition reimbursement, and dental plans.

Read More: Benefits of Hiring Dedicated Developers

  1. Working Space:

When you are hiring an in-house developer, you have to also consider the expenses that will include the rent of the working space. Moreover, you have to provide your employees with a computer and uninterrupted Internet connection, which will increase your costs further.

  1. Training Cost:

Every other day there is new technology in the market. And, to make sure that your company is aligned with the latest technology, training session at the workplace becomes quintessential. The cost of these training sessions will also add up to the cost of hiring in-house developers.

In the case of a remote team, the training of employees is handled by the company you partner with. It becomes their job to train the employees on the latest technology in the market.

  1. Other Expenses:

Apart from this, there will be other associated expenses such as electricity and the Internet. Expenses like birthday celebrations, 1-year completion rewards, bonuses, trips, and parties to motivate employees.

When you choose to hire remote developers, you need to worry about any such expenses.

Which option offers better cost savings: In-house vs. Remote Developers?

In today’s digital landscape, the question of whether to employ in-house developers or opt for remote developers has become a pivotal consideration for businesses seeking efficient and cost-effective solutions. This article delves into the nuances of this decision-making process, examining the factors that contribute to better cost savings.

Understanding In-House Developers

The Pros and Cons of In-House Development

In-house development provides a sense of control and immediate communication. This can lead to faster problem-solving and direct collaboration among team members. On the flip side, it involves higher overhead costs, such as office space, equipment, and benefits.

Exploring Remote Developers

The Advantages and Drawbacks of Remote Development

Remote Developers offer the flexibility to tap into a global talent pool without the limitations of geographic location. This can significantly reduce costs related to office infrastructure. However, it may pose challenges in terms of communication and time zone differences.

Cost Considerations

Crunching the Numbers: Which is More Economical?

When it comes to cost savings, remote developers tend to be more budget-friendly. With reduced office expenses and access to a diverse range of skills, companies can allocate resources more efficiently. Conversely, in-house developers come with higher fixed costs due to office upkeep and additional administrative expenses.

Quality and Output

Balancing Cost Savings with Output Quality

While cost is a crucial factor, the quality of work is equally important. In-house developers often have a better understanding of the company’s culture and objectives, potentially leading to higher quality output. On the other hand, remote developers offer a broader skill set and fresh perspectives, enhancing innovation.

Communication and Collaboration

The Role of Communication in Cost Savings

Effective communication is vital for successful project execution. In-house teams benefit from immediate face-to-face interactions, minimizing misunderstandings. Remote teams rely heavily on digital communication tools, which can sometimes lead to misinterpretations or delays.

Project Management

Project Oversight: In-House vs. Remote

Managing projects with in-house developers allows for real-time supervision and quick adjustments. However, remote teams can utilize project management software to maintain transparency and accountability, ensuring efficient progress tracking.

Security and Data Protection

Safeguarding Sensitive Information

In-house teams have tighter control over security measures, ensuring sensitive information is safeguarded within the company premises. Remote teams must implement robust cybersecurity protocols to protect data, which could add to the overall cost.

Flexibility and Scalability

Adapting to Changing Needs

Remote developers offer greater flexibility in scaling resources based on project demands. This agility can lead to optimized cost management. In-house teams may struggle to adjust swiftly to changing requirements, potentially affecting cost-effectiveness.

Conclusion

In the eternal debate of “In-House Developers vs. Remote Developers,” there isn’t a one-size-fits-all answer. The choice depends on various factors, including the company’s size, nature of projects, and budgetary considerations. By carefully evaluating these aspects, businesses can make an informed decision that aligns with their goals and cost-saving strategies.

Cost of hiring remote developers?

The only costs associated with hiring developers are the cost of recruiting the employees and the salary of the developers based upon the per-hour charges. Other than this, you need not spend any additional amount on birthday celebrations, electricity or the Internet connection.

Also, there will be no health and insurance benefits and training costs associated with a remote development team. Once you have hired a team, you only required to coordinate with them for project updates. If you are looking to collaborate with the team in India to set up your remote development team in India, then let’s have a discussion over a call. Graffersid is based in Indore, India, which is still safe from the impact of Corona. Indore with 0 cases of Coronavirus is taking all the measures to prevent the virus from spreading in the city. Having a remote development team in Indore is the most reliable amid Corona times where another country is locking down all the major cities.

Every business startup begins with high hopes and investor confidence. However, there are certain odd circumstances that can either make a business startup or mar its success.

According to various studies conducted recently, a number of business startups capitulate due to a myriad of reasons, one of the most common being lack of budget. Capital is the basic ingredient for any business to thrive. Without adequate finance management, business startups tend to fall down, and this malignant obstacle often causes early-stage startup owners to seek financial backup.

If you are also one of those entrepreneurs who are finding effective ways to raise funds for your startups, then you are in the right place. In this blog, you will find everything right from what is funding to how to raise the funding at various stages of your startup.

Let’s dive in:

What is Funding?

Funding refers to the capital that is required to start and run a business. It is a financial investment in the company for manufacturing, expansion, office spaces, product development, inventory, sales, and marketing.

Many startups choose to not raise funding from external sources and are funded by their co-founders only, which prevents debts and saves them from equity dilution. However, as the startups grow large and scale their operations, they look forward to raising funding.

Difference between Equity Financing and Debt Finacing

Why is Funding Required?

There are one, a few, or all of the below-mentioned reasons for a startup to raise funding. As an entrepreneur, you should be clear about why you should raise funding and you should also have a detailed business plan before you approach the investors.

  • Team hiring
  • Working capital
  • Prototype creation, product development
  • App/Website development
  • Raw materials and equipment
  • Licenses and certifications
  • Legal and consulting services
  • Marketing and Sales
  • Office space.

Sources of Funding at Various Stages of Startups:

There are multiple funding options available for startups. However, the source of funding should align with the stage of your startup. It is important to note here that raising funds from external sources is a time-taking process and it can consume over 6 months to convert.

1. Ideation Stage:

This is the stage where you have an idea and working to bring it to life. At this stage, the amount of funds that is usually needed is small.

Given the fact that you are in the very low stage of the startup lifecycle, there are limited sources for raising funds. Common funding sources that are used by startups in this stage are:

2. Friends and Family:

This is the best source to raise funding at the initial stage is to ask your friends and family. You can also ask them to become a part of your plan.

3. Bootstrapping:

Bootstrapping a startup means growing your business with no venture capital. It means relying on your own savings and revenue to operate. This is the best option if you have enough savings as there will be no pressure to pay back the fund or make people part of your plan.

4. Pitching Events:

This is the prize money or financial benefit that is provided by organizations that conduct business plan competitions and challenges. Even though the amount of money that you will get through this is not generally large, it is usually enough for the idea stage. But, to win such pitching events it is a crucial and unique business plan.

5. Validation/Seed Stage

This is the stage where you have a prototype ready for your startup and you are looking forward to validating the potential demand for your startup’s product. This stage is also known as Proof of Concept, where you launch the prototype of the product to determine the market needs. And, to do this, you will be required to conduct the test of the product on potential customers and conduct field trials.

Common funding options that startups can utilize at this stage are:

Angel Investors:

No need to frown if you don’t have a rich uncle and you can’t get enough cash from your assets, you can always look for a wealthy non-relative. You can approach well-off individuals to invest in your startup in exchange for an equity stake. These investors are known as angel investors. Angel investors are generally the ones who are successful in a particular industry and looking for new opportunities in that same industry.

There are angel investors who not only provide you with the finances to get your business off the ground but also share their experience. Moreover, they can also leverage their current contacts within an industry to open the doors for your startup. 

Here is a list of a few organizations that put your business in contact with angel investors:

  1. Tech Coast Angels
  2. MicroVentures
  3. Go4Funding
  4. Band of Angels
  5. Golden Seeds LLC
  6. AngelList
  7. Angel Capital Association

Incubators:

Business incubators are your go-to option if you have an excellent business, but need aid in terms of both money and guidance. Business incubators are organizations that are dedicated to providing services and support to fledgling companies. Business incubators are mainly run by government agencies, venture capital firms, and universities with the goal of nurturing new businesses. They are dedicated to providing early-stage startups with networking, infrastructure marketing, and financial assistance.

Here are some of the popular business incubators:

  1. Y Combinator
  2. Techstars
  3. 500 Startups
  4. AngelPad
  5. Seedcamp

Crowdfunding:

There are crowdfunding websites such as Kickstarter, which allow artists, charities, entrepreneurs, and individuals to apply for cash online. Prospective entrepreneurs who are planning to raise funding through crowdfunding need to understand the rules of the game.

Some crowdfunding asks you to raise specified goals before releasing the collected funds. If the goal is not met, funds are returned to the donors. The important thing to note here is these platforms also take a cut of the money raised to fund their own operations.

Here are some recognized crowdfunding platforms:

  1. SeedUps
  2. EquityNet
  3. Peerbackers
  4. RocketHub
  5. SeedInvest

Early Traction Stage:

The early Traction Stage is defined as the stage in which the startup’s products or services are launched in the market. Key performance indicators such as revenue, app downloads, and customers become crucial at this stage. At this stage, funds are required to increase product offerings, grow user base and expand to new geographies.

Here are Mistakes and Solutions: 5 Lessons from 10 Failed Unicorn Startups!!

Common funding sources available at this stage are:

Banks/NBFCs:

At this stage, startups can show market traction and revenue to raise the format debt from banks and NBFCs. This is especially applicable to working capital. Here some entrepreneurs might prefer debt funding over equity as the former does not dilute equity stake.

Venture Capital Funds:

Venture Capital funds are professionally managed investment funds that are exclusively available for high-growth startups. Each VC fund has got certain investment criteria like the stage of a startup, preferred sectors and funding amount, which should align with the startup.

Venture Debt Funds:

These are private investment funds that invest money in startups mainly in the form of debt. Venture Debt Funds typically involve funding along with an angel or VC round.

Scaling & Above Stage:

This is the stage at which a startup is experiencing a fast rate of market growth and boosting revenues.

Know about What is the best eCommerce platform to use for a startup?

Common funding sources utilized at this stage are:

Venture Capital Funds:

It is recommended to go for this approach only after the startup has achieved significant market traction. A pool of VCs may come together and fund your startup.

Private Investment Firms:

Private Investment Firms have lately started funding fast-growing startups that have successfully maintained a consistent growth record.

Have an app Idea

How can I attract angel investors to fund my early-stage startup?

Starting a new venture is an exciting endeavor, but finding the necessary funding to turn your idea into a reality can be quite challenging. Fortunately, angel investors can play a crucial role in providing the financial backing your early-stage startup needs. In this guide, we’ll walk you through effective strategies to attract angel investors and secure funding for your business.

Understanding Angel Investors

Angel investors are individuals who invest their personal funds into early-stage startups in exchange for ownership equity or convertible debt. Unlike traditional venture capitalists, angel investors often invest smaller amounts and are more willing to take risks on innovative and unproven ideas.

Preparing Your Startup for Investment

  • Conducting Competitor Research

Before seeking angel investment, it’s essential to understand your market landscape. Research your competitors, identify gaps in the market, and pinpoint what sets your startup apart. This information will not only help you refine your business strategy but also demonstrate to potential investors that you’ve done your homework.

  • Defining Your Unique Selling Proposition (USP)

Angel investors are attracted to startups with a clear USP that solves a problem or fulfills a need in a unique way. Define what makes your product or service special and how it adds value to your target audience. Highlighting your USP can make your startup more appealing to investors looking for innovation.

Crafting a Compelling Pitch

  • Creating an Engaging Elevator Pitch

Your elevator pitch is a concise and captivating overview of your startup. It should communicate your business idea, target market, and the problem you’re solving. Incorporate your USP and the potential for growth. Remember, a strong elevator pitch can make a lasting impression on potential angel investors.

  • Developing a Detailed Business Plan

A well-structured business plan outlines your startup’s goals, target audience, revenue model, marketing strategy, and financial projections. A comprehensive plan demonstrates your commitment to success and helps angel investors envision the future of your business.

Leveraging Your Network

  • Tapping into Your Personal Connections

Networking plays a significant role in attracting angel investors. Leverage your personal and professional contacts to get introductions to potential investors. Attending industry events, workshops, and startup meetups can also help you expand your network and connect with those interested in funding startups.

  • Seeking Recommendations and Introductions

Consider seeking recommendations from mentors, advisors, or other entrepreneurs who have successfully secured angel investments. An introduction from a trusted source can greatly increase your credibility and chances of getting noticed by potential investors.

Showcasing Traction and Potential

  • Demonstrating Traction

Angel investors want to see that your startup is gaining traction in the market. Present data on customer acquisition, user engagement, and any milestones achieved. This evidence of progress can instill confidence in investors and show them that your business is on the right track.

  • Outlining Future Growth

While showcasing current traction is essential, outlining your plans for future growth is equally important. Investors want to know how their investment will contribute to your startup’s expansion. Clearly articulate your growth strategy, including marketing initiatives, product development, and scalability plans.

What percentage of equity should I offer to angel investors?

The equity percentage offered to angel investors can vary widely depending on factors such as the stage of your startup, the amount of investment, and the investor’s expectations. It’s crucial to strike a balance between attracting investment and retaining a reasonable amount of ownership.

How do angel investors typically exit their investments?

Angel investors typically exit their investments through methods such as acquisition by a larger company or an initial public offering (IPO). Some investments may also result in a buyback of shares by the startup. It’s important to discuss potential exit strategies with investors to align expectations.

What role do angel investors play in the business?

While angel investors often provide funding, they can also offer valuable expertise, guidance, and connections. Some may take on advisory roles or join your board of directors. Be open to discussing the level of involvement an investor desires and how it aligns with your business goals.

What are the key factors that investors look for when considering funding a startup in its Series A round?

Investors evaluate several key factors when considering funding a startup in its Series A round. These factors help them assess the potential for growth, sustainability, and return on investment.

Understanding Series A Funding

Series A funding marks a pivotal juncture in the life of a startup. It typically comes after a successful seed funding round and is aimed at accelerating the company’s growth. During this stage, startups seek larger investments to scale their operations, enhance their product or service, and penetrate the market more deeply.

Key Factors Investors Look For

1. Market Opportunity and Potential

Investors seek startups operating in a burgeoning market with substantial growth potential. A well-defined target market and a clear understanding of how the startup’s offering addresses a significant problem or need are essential. Thorough market research and the ability to showcase the startup’s potential to capture a meaningful market share can be a game-changer.

2. Strong Value Proposition

A solid value proposition sets a startup apart from its competitors. Investors look for a unique selling proposition that clearly communicates why customers would choose this startup’s solution over others. This could be a technological edge, a disruptive approach, or a novel business model.

3. Traction and Growth Metrics

Startups that have gained traction and can provide concrete growth metrics have a competitive edge. Investors closely examine metrics like monthly active users, customer acquisition cost, churn rate, and revenue growth. Consistent, sustainable growth is a strong indicator of a startup’s potential.

4. Exceptional Team

A talented, adaptable, and driven team is a cornerstone of startup success. Investors evaluate the founders’ expertise, their ability to execute the business plan, and their passion for the venture. A cohesive team with a track record of overcoming challenges is highly attractive to investors.

5. Product or Service Innovation

Innovation is a key driver of success in the startup ecosystem. Investors want to see how a startup’s product or service stands out in the market, whether through technological innovation, unique features, or a novel approach to solving a problem.

6. Monetization Strategy

Investors need a clear understanding of how a startup plans to monetize its offering. Whether it’s through subscriptions, freemium models, or other strategies, a well-defined monetization plan demonstrates the startup’s ability to generate revenue and achieve profitability.

7. Competitive Landscape Assessment

A thorough analysis of the competitive landscape showcases a startup’s awareness of its rivals and its strategy to outperform them. Investors appreciate startups that can identify their unique advantages and articulate how they will maintain a competitive edge.

8. Clear and Realistic Financials

Transparent and well-structured financial projections reassure investors of a startup’s fiscal responsibility. Investors analyze the startup’s burn rate, runway, and forecasts to assess its financial health and sustainability.

In the dynamic realm of startup funding, securing Series A funding is a pivotal step that requires meticulous preparation and a compelling value proposition. Investors seek a combination of a promising market opportunity, a standout product or service, demonstrated growth, and a dedicated team. By addressing these key factors, startups can enhance their appeal to investors and pave the way for accelerated growth and success.

For more insights on startup funding and strategies, feel free to reach out to us!

How can You build strong relationships with potential investors to increase my startup’s chances of receiving funding?

In the dynamic world of startups, securing funding is often a critical milestone for growth and success. To increase your startup’s chances of receiving funding, it’s crucial to cultivate strong relationships with potential investors. This section explores effective strategies to build and nurture these relationships, ultimately enhancing your startup’s appeal and credibility within the investor community.

Understanding the Importance of Investor Relationships

Building connections with potential investors offers more than just financial benefits. A solid investor relationship can provide mentorship, guidance, and access to valuable industry insights. These relationships are built on trust, credibility, and effective communication.

Building Trust and Credibility

  • Providing Clear Business Plans

Investors appreciate a well-defined business plan that outlines your startup’s goals, target market, competition analysis, and revenue projections. A clear plan demonstrates your strategic thinking and commitment to achieving milestones.

  • Demonstrating Industry Expertise

Investors want to see that you have a deep understanding of your industry. Showcase your expertise by highlighting your team’s experience, industry partnerships, and innovative solutions that set your startup apart. This establishes confidence in your ability to navigate challenges and seize opportunities.

Effective Communication Strategies

  • Tailoring Your Pitch

Every investor is unique, so customize your pitch to align with their interests and priorities. Research potential investors thoroughly to understand their investment history and preferences. This personalized approach shows that you value their time and have considered how their expertise aligns with your business.

  • Providing Regular Updates

Maintain open lines of communication by sharing regular updates on your startup’s progress. Highlight achievements, address challenges, and outline upcoming milestones. Timely updates demonstrate transparency and a commitment to delivering results.

Networking Opportunities

  • Attending Industry Events

Participating in industry conferences, seminars, and networking events provides a platform to connect with potential investors. Engage in meaningful conversations, exchange ideas, and explore potential partnerships. Remember, these events are not just about pitching; they’re about building genuine relationships.

  • Utilizing Online Platforms

Online platforms, including investor networks and social media, offer opportunities to showcase your startup to a broader audience. Share insightful content, engage in discussions, and connect with investors who share your vision. Online interactions can lead to offline relationships and investment opportunities.

FAQs

Q1: How do I identify the right investors for my startup?
A1: Research is key. Look for investors who have a history of investing in your industry or similar ventures. Platforms like AngelList, Crunchbase, and LinkedIn can help you identify potential investors.

Q2: What should I include in my pitch?
A2: Your pitch should cover your startup’s value proposition, target market, competitive advantage, revenue model, and funding needs. Tailor your pitch based on the investor’s background and interests.

Q3: How often should I provide updates to investors?
A3: Aim for regular updates, such as monthly or quarterly emails. Share significant milestones, growth metrics, and any challenges you’re addressing. Transparency fosters trust.

Cultivating strong relationships with potential investors is a multifaceted endeavor that requires clear communication, industry expertise, and a personalized approach. By demonstrating your startup’s value and aligning it with investor interests, you’ll not only increase your chances of securing funding but also lay the foundation for mutually beneficial, long-lasting partnerships. Remember, building relationships takes time, so be patient and persistent in your efforts.

Conclusion:

Unless you already have a high bank balance, putting together finances to launch a new business demands serious planning and effort. While raising funds for your startup, it is crucial to weigh the benefits and downsides of available funding options. Make sure to check all the pros/cons of the funding option you are choosing so that you can enjoy the greatest flexibility at the least cost.

You can also consider obtaining funds from a mix of different sources. Even if you land a significant band, you may need additional cash to manage unanticipated events and expenses. Fortunately, the rise of financing sources like peer-to-peer lending and crowdfunding has brought more range of financing options for entrepreneurs than ever before.

Set Up an Offshore Team in India has become the most popular way of outsourcing software development. Offshore development means having a dedicated in-house team at a cost that favors your pocket. 

Offshore development has become a favored approach for established businesses as well as startups to maintain, implement, and improve software products for the benefit of their business. A dedicated offshore development company leverages the business by implementing flexibility, cost benefits, and knowledge concentration for your business.

The offshore development acts as an extended team that works at an overlapping shift. They follow the company’s culture when you train them as per your needs. When you hire an offshore developer or team make sure that they are knowledgeable and ensure quality results. Hiring an offshore development team means having an efficient team with outstanding working talent. 

You don’t have to spend extra resources on them. Moreover, with the offshore development team, you not only get developers but many types of specialists. Whether it is project managers, graphic designers, or content writers, every role is important.

App Development Team
App Development Team

Must Need App Development Team 

Here are a few roles that are expected to perform:

1. Designers and Developers:

Designers and developers hold the responsibility of planning, drafting designs, developing software, website or app, testing, and maintenance.

2. Accounts Manager:

Works with company clients and grants them loyalty. Account manager work is to make sure that clients are satisfied with the work of the company.

3. Project Coordinator:

The project Manager or Coordinator is the one who prioritizes the task of managing offshore development and control communication. Your PM ( Project Manager) is responsible for building the development plan, grouping up the team, and making sure there is timely delivery of the project.

4. Tester/Quality Analyst:

The tester or Quality Analyst keeps a check on the quality and integrity of the project.

5. Content Writer:

To deal with the content creation of an application or website.

6. Usability Engineer:

Before the release of the product, it is the responsibility of the usability engineer to evaluate the user-friendliness of the application or website.

Read Also:  5 Ways to Find and Hire the App Developer

Why do you need an offshore development center?

The offshore development center is always good to be established in an affordable country rather than maintaining an in-house team. India is one of those countries with a low cost of living, which makes India one of the widely preferred countries for setting up offshore development.

Hiring Offshore Resource Benefits

According to the recent report by AT Kearney, India is the first country based on skills, finance, and developer availability.

7.707: India

6.32: China

6.11: Malaysia

5.99: Indonesia

By launching your offshore development in India, you can reduce the company’s workload and get more time to focus on the core business objective. If you are not convinced to outsource your software development projects to India know more about

So, all set to launch your offshore development in India? The process of looking for a right offshore partner is way easier than hiring an in-house team. Here are a few steps to follow will set up an offshore development team:

1. Setup your Business Goal:

Have a crystal clear idea of what projects you would like to outsource, if not the entire project what specific tasks you are looking to unburden. First and the foremost thing is to define whether you want to develop a project from scratch, or just want to outsource part of it. There are also chances that you simply require a Python developer and looking forward to hiring a dedicated Python developer from the offshore development company.

2. Non-disclosure Agreement

Compile a strict policy norm that has a non-disclosure agreement. Mention the details and a clause on the details which you seem to be most important and should not be disclosed to a 3rd party. Both you and the offshore team should have a clear understanding of the agreement before duly signing it.

3. Provide Detailed Specification 

Before putting pen to paper make sure to provide the remote developers with complete specifications with set deadlines. Try to be as thorough as possible and always leave some scope for them to improvise and be creative.

Communication and transparency are important pillars that support offshore development. Make sure your team is providing you with the call upon requests and sprint reports whenever needed. There are tools like Jira and Trello that can be used for maintaining communication with your offshore development team.

4. Follow Up

Set aside a particular checklist and parameters that will best describe the progress of your project weekly and monthly. Follow-up doesn’t mean providing negative feedback, it also includes reinforcing good performance. With follow-up, it becomes easy to find out what’s happening. The priorities are getting fulfilled or not and removing obstacles if there are any. 

There are online tools such as Freedcamp through which you can track daily tasks. Review the progress and don’t hesitate to give your feedback on changes you would like to see.

For an in-depth understanding of considerations and challenges while setting up an offshore development team.

Steps involved in setting up an offshore development team in India?

Setting up an offshore development team in India involves several important steps to ensure a smooth and successful integration of the remote team into your organization’s workflow. Here’s a comprehensive guide to help you navigate the process:

  1. Define Project Scope and Requirements: Clearly define your project’s scope, goals, and technical requirements. Determine the skill sets and roles you need within your offshore team.

  2. Choose the Right Location: India has multiple tech hubs like Indore, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Pune, and Chennai. Research these locations to find the one that best matches your project’s needs.

  3. Select a Reliable Partner: Consider partnering with an established offshore service provider or setting up your own subsidiary. Research the market, read reviews, and evaluate potential partners’ reputations and track records.

  4. Legal and Regulatory Considerations: Understand the legal and regulatory requirements for establishing an offshore team in India. This might include company registration, taxation, employment laws, intellectual property rights, etc.

  5. Create a Business Plan: Develop a comprehensive business plan that outlines your goals, budget, timeline, staffing requirements, and expected outcomes.

  6. Build the Team: Recruit skilled professionals based on the roles and skills you defined in Step 1. Conduct interviews, technical assessments, and reference checks to ensure you’re hiring the right talent.

  7. Set Up Infrastructure: Establish the necessary physical and digital infrastructure, including office space, computers, software, communication tools, security protocols, and network connectivity.

  8. Cultural and Time Zone Considerations: Understand the cultural nuances and time zone differences between your home country and India. Adapt your communication and collaboration methods to accommodate these differences.

  9. Onboarding and Training: Provide a comprehensive onboarding process that introduces the offshore team to your company’s culture, policies, project details, tools, and processes. Provide any necessary training to get them up to speed.

  10. Communication and Collaboration: Implement effective communication and collaboration tools to bridge the geographical gap. Regular video conferences, chat platforms, project management tools, and version control systems are essential.

  11. Define Roles and Responsibilities: Clearly define roles, responsibilities, and reporting structures within the offshore team. This ensures everyone knows their tasks and who to communicate with.

  12. Project Management: Set up project management processes that allow for effective tracking of progress, milestones, and deadlines. Regularly review and assess project status.

  13. Regular Performance Reviews: Implement a performance review process that provides feedback to team members. Recognize achievements and address any challenges promptly.

  14. Cultural Integration: Foster a sense of unity and collaboration across your onshore and offshore teams. Encourage knowledge sharing, cultural exchange, and team-building activities.

  15. Visit and Collaborate In-Person: Periodically visit your offshore team to establish face-to-face relationships, build trust, and strengthen collaboration.

  16. Monitor and Adapt: Continuously monitor the team’s performance, address any issues that arise, and be willing to adapt your strategies based on feedback and experience.

Setting up an offshore development team in India requires careful planning, dedication, and effective management. By following these steps, you’ll be better equipped to create a successful and efficient offshore development team that contributes positively to your organization’s goals.

Key Factors For Selecting an Outsourcing Partner for Setting up a Team in India

Selecting an outsourcing partner for setting up a team in India requires careful consideration of several key factors to ensure a successful partnership and project execution. Here are some important factors to consider:

  1. Expertise and Experience: Evaluate the outsourcing partner’s expertise and experience in the specific industry and domain relevant to your project. Look for a partner with a proven track record of delivering similar projects successfully.

  2. Talent Pool and Skillset: India has a vast pool of skilled professionals. Ensure that the outsourcing partner can provide access to the right talents with the necessary skills and qualifications for your project.

  3. Cultural Compatibility: A good cultural fit between your company and the outsourcing partner is essential for effective communication, collaboration, and project alignment. Shared values, communication styles, and work ethics can contribute to a smoother partnership.

  4. Communication Skills: Effective communication is critical for remote collaboration. Ensure that the outsourcing partner’s team has strong English language skills to facilitate clear and efficient communication.

  5. Infrastructure and Technology: The outsourcing partner should have modern infrastructure, reliable technology, and access to the necessary software tools and equipment required for your project’s success.

  6. Data Security and Intellectual Property Protection: Ensure that the outsourcing partner has robust data security measures and a clear intellectual property protection policy in place to safeguard your sensitive information and proprietary technologies.

  7. Quality Assurance Processes: Inquire about the partner’s quality assurance processes, including testing, review, and validation procedures to ensure that the deliverables meet the desired quality standards.

  8. Project Management and Reporting: A strong project management framework is crucial for tracking progress, managing timelines, and addressing any potential issues promptly. Request information about the partner’s project management practices and reporting frequency.

  9. Flexibility and Scalability: Consider the outsourcing partner’s ability to accommodate changes in project scope, requirements, and team size. A flexible partner can better adapt to evolving project needs.

  10. References and Client Feedback: Seek references and feedback from other clients who have worked with the outsourcing partner. This can provide valuable insights into their strengths, weaknesses, and overall performance.

  11. Legal and Contractual Matters: Review the legal aspects of the partnership, including contracts, terms and conditions, and any potential legal implications of working across international borders.

  12. Cost and Budget: While cost savings are often a primary motivation for outsourcing, don’t compromise on quality for the sake of lower costs. Evaluate the cost structure and ensure it aligns with your budget and project requirements.

  13. Time Zone and Communication Overlaps: Consider the time zone differences between your location and India. Opt for an outsourcing partner with overlapping working hours for real-time communication and collaboration.

  14. Site Visits and Onboarding: Depending on the project’s complexity and importance, it might be beneficial to conduct site visits and onboarding sessions to establish a strong working relationship and ensure a smooth start.

  15. Long-Term Partnership Potential: Assess whether the outsourcing partner can be a long-term partner who can grow with your business and adapt to your changing needs over time.

By carefully evaluating these factors, you can make an informed decision when selecting an outsourcing partner for setting up a team in India, ultimately leading to a successful and productive partnership.

Advantages of Setting up an Offshore Development Team in India

Cost-Effective Talent Pool

When it comes to offshore development, one of the foremost advantages of choosing India is its cost-effective talent pool. Indian professionals are known for their technical expertise and proficiency in various programming languages and technologies. What makes them even more appealing is the cost-effectiveness of their services. Hiring developers in India typically comes at a fraction of the cost compared to many Western countries, allowing businesses to allocate their budgets more efficiently.

Quality of Work

While cost savings are a compelling factor, it’s essential to note that Indian offshore development teams do not compromise on quality. Many Indian IT professionals have received education and training from top-notch institutes, and they adhere to international quality standards in their work. Businesses can expect high-quality software development, web design, and other IT services from Indian teams, ensuring that the final product meets or exceeds their expectations.

Harnessing Expertise: A Win-Win

In India, offshore development is not just about cost savings; it’s about harnessing expertise. Indian developers bring a wealth of knowledge and experience to the table, making them valuable assets for businesses aiming to stay at the forefront of technological advancements.

Time Zone Advantage

Collaborating with an offshore development team in India offers a strategic time zone advantage for businesses. India’s time zone allows for significant overlap with the working hours of Western countries, such as the United States and Europe. This synchronicity enables real-time communication and collaboration, reducing project timelines and enhancing productivity.

English Proficiency

Effective communication is the cornerstone of successful offshore development partnerships. India boasts a large pool of English-speaking professionals, making it easier for businesses to convey their requirements and ideas. This language proficiency minimizes the chances of miscommunication, ensuring that projects progress smoothly and efficiently.

Cultural Compatibility

Cultural compatibility is often underestimated but plays a pivotal role in offshore collaborations. India has a culture that emphasizes respect for deadlines, commitment to quality, and adaptability to diverse work cultures. These cultural traits align well with the expectations of businesses seeking offshore development partners.

Bridging Cultural Gaps

By setting up an offshore development team in India, companies can bridge cultural gaps and build strong, collaborative relationships that drive project success.

Government Support

The Indian government has been proactive in supporting the growth of the IT and outsourcing industry. Various incentives, tax benefits, and favorable policies are in place to encourage foreign investment and business partnerships. This government support further sweetens the deal for companies considering offshore development in India.

Scalability

The scalability of offshore development teams is a critical factor for businesses looking to adapt to changing market conditions. In India, companies can easily scale their teams up or down based on project requirements. This flexibility ensures that businesses can remain agile and responsive to evolving needs.

Access to Diverse Skill Sets

India’s diverse talent pool is a significant advantage for businesses seeking specialized skills. Whether it’s AI and machine learning, blockchain development, or mobile app development, you can find experts in a wide range of technologies in India. This diversity enables businesses to tap into niche skill sets that may not be readily available locally.

Technological Advancements

India has consistently invested in technological advancements and infrastructure development. From state-of-the-art software development tools to robust IT infrastructure, businesses setting up offshore teams in India gain access to the latest technology stacks, giving them a competitive edge.

Focus on Core Competencies

By outsourcing development tasks to India, businesses can refocus their internal resources on core competencies and strategic initiatives. This strategic reallocation of resources allows companies to innovate and expand their market reach without being bogged down by routine development tasks.

Data Security Measures

Data security is a top priority for businesses worldwide. Indian IT service providers adhere to stringent data security protocols, ensuring the confidentiality and integrity of sensitive information. These measures give businesses peace of mind when entrusting their projects to Indian offshore teams.

Competitive Edge

In a global market where innovation and efficiency are paramount, setting up an offshore development team in India provides a significant competitive edge. Companies can accelerate product development, reduce time-to-market, and stay ahead of competitors by leveraging the advantages of Indian talent and resources.

Unlock Your Offshore Development Potential with GraffersID!

When it comes to finding a reliable offshore development team, Graffersid is your best bet. With a 95% successful client rate, Graffersid provides its clients with unmatched solutions for their projects. We strive to develop a customer-centric software solution that imparts a unique identity to our clients. Our team of expert web developers comes up with ideas that meet the business needs of our clients impeccably.

Our team of experienced professionals is dedicated to turning your vision into reality, offering top-notch development, design, and digital solutions. Let’s embark on a journey towards innovation and success together. Connect with GraffersID today and elevate your offshore development experience to new heights!

Python vs PHP, both are widely used high-level programming languages. PHP is an open-source server-side scripting language, while Python is known for its dynamics, simplicity, and availability. Despite being equally popular among developers, these two languages also have several differences. The wide prevalence of both languages leads to one question-which language is to be chosen for server-side development?

To get the right to this question, it is important to consider the features, scope, and functionality of Python and PHP in software development. It is also important to understand the main differences between Python vs PHP. 

In this article, we strive to explain the differences and similarities between the two languages i.e. Python vs PHP.

What is PHP?

Developed in 1994, PHP, or Hypertext Preprocessor is an open-source server-side scripting language. Developed by Rasmus Lerdorf, PHP was created as several components and extensions that extended the capabilities of the widely used C language. With the constant use and extension of PHP and the emergence of community, the new language soon becomes a widely used language for backend development. 

Over 80% of modern websites are based on PHP today. If you want to hire PHP Developers from India, Consult GraffersID, a leading IT Staff Augmentation Company. 

PHP is evolving constantly and is complemented by the developer team and members of a large user community. PHP is in peak and it would be wrong to say that there is any decline in the popularity of the language.

What is Python?

Developed by Guido van Rossum in 1989 as the replacement of the ABC language, Python is five years older than its competitor. Python gained popularity around the year 2000 after the release of Python 2.0, whose one of the main features was complete Unicode support.

Python was engineered as a full-stack programming language, since the initial days. That’s the reason why it is not popular on the web- today less than 1% of websites are created and managed using Python. 

Want to hire Python  Developers? Consult Us Now

Advantages of PHP:

Wide Adoption:

PHP has been around for a long time and is widely adopted, making it one of the most popular programming languages for web development. It powers millions of websites and is supported by a large community of developers.

Easy to Learn:

PHP has a relatively low learning curve, especially for beginners with a background in HTML. Its syntax is similar to C, Java, and other languages, making it accessible for developers from different programming backgrounds.

Versatility:

PHP is primarily designed for web development and excels at creating dynamic and interactive web pages. It offers extensive support for databases, making it suitable for building content management systems, e-commerce platforms, and other web applications.

Huge Ecosystem:

PHP has a vast ecosystem with a wide range of frameworks, libraries, and tools available. Frameworks like Laravel, Symfony, and CodeIgniter provide structure and help developers build applications more efficiently.

Integration Capabilities:

PHP integrates well with various databases, including MySQL, PostgreSQL, and MongoDB. It also offers seamless integration with popular web servers like Apache and Nginx.

Disadvantages of PHP:

Inconsistent Design:

PHP’s long history has led to inconsistencies in its design and syntax, making it sometimes challenging to maintain and read code. It lacks a unified standard library and often requires external libraries for common functionalities.

Security Concerns:

PHP has had its share of security issues in the past, although significant improvements have been made over the years. However, developers must remain cautious and follow best practices to avoid vulnerabilities in PHP applications.

Performance:

PHP is an interpreted language, which can result in slower performance compared to compiled languages like Java or C++. While this performance gap has narrowed with advancements in PHP engines, it may still be a consideration for highly demanding applications.

Advantages of Python:

Readability and Simplicity:

Python emphasizes readability and uses clean syntax, making it easy to understand and write code. Its simplicity reduces the time and effort required for development and debugging, making it an excellent choice for beginners and experienced programmers alike.

Extensive Library Support:

Python boasts a vast standard library and a rich ecosystem of third-party libraries and frameworks. This abundance of resources enables developers to leverage existing solutions for various tasks, such as web development, data analysis, scientific computing, machine learning, and more.

Cross-Platform Compatibility:

Python is available on multiple platforms, including Windows, macOS, and Linux, allowing developers to write code once and run it anywhere. This portability is beneficial when deploying applications across different operating systems.

Strong Community and Documentation:

Python has a vibrant and active community of developers who contribute to its growth. This community support ensures an abundance of documentation, tutorials, and forums to help programmers at all skill levels.

Scalability and Productivity:

Python’s simplicity and vast library ecosystem contribute to increased productivity. Its scalability allows for easy development and maintenance of large-scale applications, making it a popular choice for startups and enterprises alike.

Disadvantages of Python:

Performance Limitations:

Python is an interpreted language, which can lead to slower performance compared to compiled languages. While Python offers ways to optimize performance, highly computational tasks may still be better suited to languages like C++.

Global Interpreter Lock (GIL):

The GIL in Python restricts the execution of multiple threads simultaneously, which can limit performance when dealing with multithreaded CPU-bound applications. However, this limitation doesn’t affect I/O-bound tasks and can be mitigated by using multiprocessing or external libraries.

Mobile and Game Development:

Python is not commonly used for mobile app development or game development, as other languages like Java, Swift, or C# dominate these domains.

Is Python a server-side scripting language?

Yes, Python can be used as a server-side scripting language. Python is a versatile programming language that can be used for various purposes, including server-side web development. There are several web frameworks available for Python, such as Django, Flask, and Pyramid, that facilitate the development of server-side applications.

With these frameworks, Python can handle HTTP requests, process data, interact with databases, and generate dynamic content to be served to clients. Python’s extensive standard library and third-party packages provide numerous tools and modules for server-side scripting tasks, making it a popular choice for web development.

Python vs PHP: What is Common?

Here are the common properties between Python and PHP:

  1. Both languages are easy to learn as compared to C++ and Perl.
  2. Both languages are open source and can be updated by users for the purpose of the environment.
  3. Python and PHP are accompanied by detailed and extensive documentation.
  4. Both languages are portable and versatile.
  5. A wide developer community facilitates the process of learning and working with PHP and Python.

Python vs PHP: What are the Differences?

When choosing a language for development, its features are the first thing that should be considered.

Development Logic

The most crucial difference between PHP and Python is orientation. Python is aspect-oriented which means that it separates the program functionality and splits the program into different modules, while PHP is object-oriented, which means those code modules that contain functions and data are encapsulated into objects in PHP.

Thus, the Python developer creates separate functional modules and registers the connection between modules on an “if-then” basis. This results in an algorithm that programs blocks based on the action of users.

While on the other hand, working with PHP means creating an integral object that comprises certain properties and executes certain actions based on the user input.

Syntax

PHP’s syntax is quite similar to the syntax of C. When writing code using PHP, curly brackets, operators, additional characters, and other C elements are used. An unpleasant feature of PHP is it is incompatible for namespace conventions, which is why developers do not perceive PHP as a full-fledged programming language. However, this is mainly because the language was initially designed for website management.

On the contrary, the syntax of Python is based on the separation of the code with tabs and spaces, which considerably speeds up the process of coding, however, increases the possibility of careless errors. Python comes with the benefit of simplicity of commands, most of the commands in Python are similar to corresponding words in English, which makes it easier to learn Python.

Here are some secondary differences between PHP vs Python:

  1. PHP is tightly regulated while Python is a more flexible programming language.
  2. PHP requires loading special packages manually, whereas Python uses special packages to load additional libraries.
  3. In PHP assuring security requires additional tools. In contrast to this, applications written in Python are considered highly safe.
  4. PHP was created to support web applications and is more applicable in this area. On the other hand, Python supports a graphical user interface and can be effectively used in web development.

Know the difference between Python vs Java 

PHP vs Python: What to Choose?

Despite the number of differences between these tools, such as syntax, application, and logic, these languages also have several common properties.

They have many useful libraries, convenient, easy to use, detailed documentation, and broad communities. However, choosing the right technology between the two depends completely on your development project.

To create simple sites and web applications, as the experience of developers suggests, PHP is the best option. However, Python is your go-to option when it comes to the development of complex flexible products.

Moreover, while choosing a language for mobile development, keep in mind that Python is not limited to web development capabilities, which makes Python more versatile and convenient than PHP.

All the major mobile platforms such as Android, iOS, and Windows Mobile have some kind of Python framework that helps in the native applications.

Owning to its logic and regulations, PHP is better for web development projects. Although there are ways to build a server-side backend for mobile applications using PHP, however, it is quite harder as compared to Python.

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Conclusion

In a nutshell, the choice between PHP and Python lies in flexibility, stiffness, versatility, and nativity. The final choice of language is dependent on the assigned task and skills of the developer.

We hope through this article you can better understand the main properties of these two popular languages. Still in doubt, about which languages would make the best choice; get in touch with skilled PHP and Python developers at GraffersID, a leading IT Staff Augmentation Company.

Frequently Asked Questions:

Q1: Which language is better for server-side development, PHP or Python?

A2: The choice between PHP and Python depends on various factors, including your project requirements, personal preferences, and the specific ecosystem you are working in. Both languages have their strengths and weaknesses, so there is no definitive answer. It’s important to evaluate your needs and consider factors like performance, community support, available frameworks, and your own familiarity with the language.

Q2: What are the advantages of PHP for server-side development?
A2: PHP offers several advantages for server-side development, such as:

  • Widespread adoption: PHP is one of the most popular languages for web development, with a large and active community.
  • Ease of use: PHP has a relatively low learning curve, making it accessible for beginners and enabling rapid development.
  • Vast ecosystem: PHP has a rich ecosystem with numerous frameworks, libraries, and ready-to-use scripts available for various tasks.
  • Web-centric features: PHP was specifically designed for the web, making it efficient in handling HTTP requests and interacting with databases.

Q3: What are the advantages of Python for server-side development?
A3: Python offers several advantages for server-side development, such as:

  • Readable and expressive syntax: Python has a clean and readable syntax that promotes writing clear and maintainable code.
  • Extensive libraries and frameworks: Python has a vast collection of libraries and frameworks, such as Django and Flask, which provide powerful tools for web development.
  • Versatility: Python is a general-purpose language, so it can be used for a wide range of applications beyond web development.
  • Strong community support: Python has a large and active community that actively contributes to the language and its ecosystem.

Q4: Which language is better for performance, PHP or Python?

A4: In terms of raw performance, PHP tends to have an edge over Python for certain types of web applications due to its optimized handling of HTTP requests. However, Python’s performance can be enhanced by using efficient libraries and frameworks. Ultimately, the performance difference may not be significant enough to be the sole deciding factor, and other considerations like development speed and maintainability should also be taken into account.

Q5: Which language has better community support, PHP or Python?

A5: Both PHP and Python have large and active communities. PHP has a long history and a vast community that continuously contributes to its development and offers extensive resources for beginners. Python, on the other hand, has a strong and rapidly growing community that provides a wealth of libraries, frameworks, and online support. In terms of community support, both languages are well-established and offer numerous resources to developers.

Q6: Can I use both PHP and Python together for server-side development?

A6: Yes, it is possible to use both PHP and Python together for server-side development. For example, you can use PHP for certain aspects of your web application and Python for specific tasks or functionalities. Many projects employ a combination of different languages and technologies to leverage the strengths of each and meet their specific requirements.

Q7: How do I choose between PHP and Python for server-side development?

A7: Choosing between PHP and Python for server-side development requires considering several factors. Here’s a step-by-step approach to help you make a decision:

  1. Project Requirements: Assess the specific requirements of your project. Consider factors such as scalability, performance, security, and integration with existing systems. Determine which language aligns better with your project’s needs.

  2. Familiarity and Skillset: Evaluate your team’s familiarity and expertise with each language. If you already have a team experienced in PHP or Python, it may be advantageous to choose the language they are more comfortable with to minimize the learning curve.

  3. Ecosystem and Frameworks: Explore the available libraries, frameworks, and tools for each language. PHP has frameworks like Laravel and Symfony, while Python offers Django and Flask. Assess the maturity, community support, and feature sets of these frameworks to see which aligns better with your project goals.

  4. Performance Considerations: Consider the performance requirements of your application. PHP is optimized for handling HTTP requests, making it well-suited for web applications with high traffic. Python can achieve comparable performance with the use of efficient libraries and caching mechanisms.

  5. Community and Support: Consider the size, activity, and helpfulness of the respective communities for PHP and Python. Look for online resources, forums, and developer communities that can provide support and guidance as you develop your project.

  6. Long-Term Maintainability: Assess the long-term maintainability of your codebase. Consider factors such as code readability, maintainability, and availability of developers in the job market. Python’s clean syntax and emphasis on readability may contribute to easier code maintenance over time.

  7. Future Scalability: Evaluate the future scalability potential of your chosen language. Consider whether your language choice will allow you to easily scale your application and accommodate future growth and feature additions.

  8. Prototyping and Rapid Development: Consider the speed of development and prototyping. PHP’s ease of use and shorter learning curve may allow for rapid development, while Python’s extensive libraries and frameworks can provide powerful tools for quick prototyping as well.

The startup success rate is less than 10% this is probably the one stat that every Entrepreneur knows. However, most of entrepreneurs think that once a startup raises funding things become smoother and their success is inevitable. I studied these 10 successful Unicorn Startups that raised funding and even got amazing traction from the start and yet they failed. There were 5 traits that each one of these startups shared, not sequentially but somewhere between their run.

The 10 Unicorn Startups That Failed Are :

  1. Solyndra raised $1.2 Billion
  2. Arrivo raised $1 Billion
  3. Jawbone raised $929.9 Million
  4. The Verge raised $305 Million
  5. Beepi raised $149 Million
  6. Juicerro raised $118.5 Million
  7. Yik Yak raised $73.5 Million
  8. Shyp raised $62.1 Million
  9. PepperTap raised $51.2 Million
  10. Doppler Labs raised $51.1 Million

And this is what I found. I will go in sequential order to the importance and the magnitude of the effect it has

Reason:

“Startup is like a Marriage proposal it is best when it is well planned”

Imagine you are going to propose to someone or someone is planning to propose to you and the complete day goes as a disaster. Doesn’t makeup as a good story to tell your kids, does it?

In the same manner, before you even decide on the name of your startup you have to plan the next 2 years for your startup. You need to be crystal clear on the road map and everything in between. Of course, you won’t be accurate but at least you will be close and aware which will help you learn better.

What Happens?

Most Unicorn Startups do a lot of theoretical research which leads them to untested hopes and assumptions. The real test begins once you start your work, If these assumptions stand then it is a fairy tale story if they fail, which is the case in 90% of scenarios then you enter into serious trouble.

Solution:

As we prepare for our exams, we need to do the same preparation for our startup. MOCKUP TEST. Before you enter full-fledged into your Unicorn Startups try to do the same business as part-time or after office hours.

Practicality holds more importance than theory. You need to find a balance between both before you go ahead. Here are a few questions that these startups didn’t answer before starting:

  1. How to launch,
  2. Where to get the initial traction,
  3. How to convince your first client,
  4. How to deliver the service that you promised
  5. What is your operational cost,
  6. How much should you charge
  7. How much savings will you need? (Worst case scenarios)

“Money to startup is like petrol to a bike. It is not the most important thing but it is damn important.”

Improper Cost Calculation is by far the most common reason for all the failed Unicorn Startups around the globe. There are many founders who completely overlook the cost calculation matrix while the smarter ones highly under-calculate the expenses.  In simple terms ‘Money = Business’, however, the reverse may not be true.

What happens?

In a startup, there are many more expenses than what meets the eye. Due to a lack of experience or guidance founders often miss many expenses which a startup inculcates. As a result, all the follow-up calculations prove to be ineffective and the startups end up missing the targets by a huge margin.

Solution:

Practically it is not possible to come up with a perfect number for your expenses as there are many variables and many other unexpected expenses. Hence the idea is to be as close as possible and unearth as many possible expenses as possible. Some of the most missed expenses are:

  1. Founder’s Salary, company’s salary, Employee’s Salary, and your profit are all separate entities,
  2. Employee Birthday celebrations, Festive celebrations, etc, are all your monthly costs,
  3. Meeting with clients
  4. Travel and food expenses
  5. Daily tea and coffee expenses
  6. Rent, electricity, Office cleaning, etc

“Expanding a startup is like a ball rolling downhill; It won’t take long before it runs out of control.”

Unless you keep a check on the ball you may soon lose control over it. Expanding is something that is always there in the TO-DO list of the founders. Every day they contribute some effort to make sure they are reaching out to new potential customers and expanding their reach.

What Happens?

While trying to expand we make a lot of decisions and the workload on everyone in the team increases which creates pressure. Each market and each customer is unique in itself and if the founder expands too rapidly, they have too many decisions and too much data to analyze in a very small time. Resulting in decisions made in haste and unplanned growth, which results in mismanagement and loss of many and quality of service. Eventually, the customers will take notice and stop using the company’s services/products. Hence showing a great initial response, followed by operations being shut down completely within months.

Solution:

Good management is a very crucial part of keeping any business successfully operational. To set up good management you need 3 things Right People for the Delegation of the task, Time to Absorb Market Trends, and a Pre Planned Road Map. Some of the executable strategies for rapid growth are:

  1. Minimizing surprise factors by studying the new market,
  2. Discovering the key roles and people capable to handle those roles,
  3. Breaking growth in measurable matrixes,
  4. Defining a process to keep track of the matrixes,
  5. Frequent communication and constant support to the team
  6. Last and probably the toughest, not being greedy, knowing when to slow down and say a NO.

Learn from Dominos and always deliver your “pizza” on time. Damn, I miss my Free Pizzas.

It might come to you as a surprise but about 74% of projects miss their deadlines across domains around the globe. Things are always easier said than done. In order to convert a lead or kick-start the project, the companies often agree to the demands of the clients without ensuring that the company will be able to meet the client’s expectations and deliver on time.

What Happens?

Each client is new and their demands vary in some form from one another. For one reason or another other Salespeople at times agree to things that may be out of scope or for lower prices. These decisions impact the product/services at the later stages which creates a hostile environment for the client and company both. Clients’ launch plans are now seriously affected and the company is now starting to deplete their profits and sometimes even inculcate losses. Possible reasons for such a scenario are the Unrealistic Sales target, lack of awareness/knowledge of the people closing the deals, and improper management.

Solution:

As a founder, you need to make sure a concrete process is put in place which ensures that appropriate features, costs, and timelines are being assigned to each product/service. There are quite a few ways to do so.

  1. Commit X days to the client and give a target of X-30% to your team for finishing the task.
  2. Discover your expenses and make a custom formula to calculate the project cost,
  3. Make dependencies for signing the contract so that at least 1 more person validates the deliverables and timeline.
  4. Clearly tell the client about the limitations and challenges
  5. Keep everything documented and signed,
  6. Setting realistic Targets, in case of failure try to understand the reason,

You can’t charge for copper and deliver gold

Most Unicorn Startups/companies struggle to charge the right price for services/products. No 2 startups/companies delivering the same service/products could have the same cost. Cost depends upon a lot of factors like City, location, management, process, team, etc.

However, clients have a habit of comparing your cost with the other vendors.

What Happens?

Clients compare your cost with other competitors and make you look bad for the rates you are charging. It can be tough to explain to them why you are charging them these higher/lower prices and the effort it takes to deliver the quality you offer.

Solution:

Clients generally don’t have a problem paying you good money if they are sure about your services and quality of work. So all you need to do is win their trust. The best example is Apple’s iPhone, everyone knows that if the manufacturing cost of an iPhone is $400 then it will be sold for $1200 in the market, yet customer stands in line and waits for days to get their hands on it.

  1. Prove your quality before taking client’s money, Free Demos
  2. Create a name in the market,
  3. Showcase your portfolio,
  4. Create processes to ease communication and tracking
  5. Keep transparency
  6. Not everyone can afford you so learn to let go,
  7. It is better to have 1 client at the right cost rather than 3 clients with under margins

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Why do Unicorns Fail?

Unicorns, which are startups valued at over $1 billion, have been the darlings of the tech industry in recent years. But what happens when these unicorns fail? What causes them to go from being a successful startup to a failed one?

We’ll explore why some unicorn startups fail and what we can learn from their mistakes. We’ll look at some of the most famous unicorns that failed and analyze what went wrong.

Some of the most common reasons include poor market fit, lack of a sustainable business model, intense competition, inability to scale, and poor execution. Additionally, many unicorns are overvalued and rely heavily on fundraising and acquisitions for growth, making them vulnerable to economic downturns.

How Many Unicorns Failed?

It is difficult to say exactly how many unicorns have failed, as the definition of a “unicorn” can vary and the term is often used informally. Additionally, some companies that were once considered unicorns may no longer meet the criteria for being a unicorn but are still considered successful companies. That being said, it is estimated that a number of unicorns have failed or struggled in recent years, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic, which has had a significant impact on the global economy and startup ecosystem. In 2020 and 2021, there have been several examples of unicorns that failed or struggled, such as WeWork, Juul, and Uber.

How can other startups learn from the failures of these unicorns?

Other startups can learn from the failures of unicorns by studying the mistakes and challenges that led to their downfall. They can identify potential risks and develop strategies to mitigate them. They can also learn from the failed unicorn’s approach to scaling, competition, leadership, and market adaptation, and develop their own strategies accordingly. Additionally, startups can seek out mentorship and guidance from successful entrepreneurs who have navigated similar challenges. By learning from the failures of unicorns, startups can increase their chances of success and avoid making the same mistakes.

What can be done to ensure that similar failures are prevented in the future?

There are several steps that can be taken to ensure that similar failures are prevented in the future:

  1. Conduct thorough market research: Startups should conduct extensive market research to understand the needs and preferences of their target customers, as well as the competitive landscape. This can help them identify potential risks and develop strategies to mitigate them.
  2. Develop a robust business model: Startups should develop a business model that is sustainable, scalable, and adaptable to changing market conditions. This can help them navigate challenges and capitalize on opportunities.
  3. Have a solid execution plan: Having a clear and detailed execution plan that outlines the steps to be taken to achieve the desired outcomes will help the startup to stay on track and avoid mistakes.
  4. Focus on the long-term vision: Startups should focus on the long-term vision and not just the short-term gains. This can help them to stay focused on the big picture and make strategic decisions that align with their goals.
  5. Seek out guidance and mentorship: Startups can benefit from seeking out guidance and mentorship from successful entrepreneurs who have navigated similar challenges. They can learn from their experiences and avoid making the same mistakes.
  6. Flexibility and adaptability: Being flexible and adaptable to market changes is key, startups should be able to pivot their strategy if needed and adapt their business model to changing market conditions.
  7. Strong leadership and management: Having strong leadership and management can help startups navigate challenges and make strategic decisions that align with their goals.
  8. Be aware of industry trends: Keeping an eye on industry trends can help startups anticipate market changes and adapt accordingly, avoiding being caught off guard by sudden shifts in the market.

Conclusion:

After studying the Rise and Fall of this startup it became evident that your products and your services are always the backbones of your company while other things like Resource Management and cost calculation are the supporting pillars.

Here are some of the most popular ways to estimate your cost and Finances

1) Create an excel sheet with the monthly cost for each employee,

2) Make a list of all the expenses and break it to monthly. Include salaries, tea, coffee, client meeting bills, office celebrations, everything.

3) Break down your service in working day (not Calendar),

4) Add markup to your base cost. (profit)

5) Profit, your salary, your company’s salary, and your employee’s salaries, they all are different don’t mix it up with your markup.

How to decide markup:

It depends on your experience and how well have you proved yourself in the market. Don’t be greedy. Don’t fill your personal bank from the company’s extra cash. This cash will help you sustain on bad days. Lastly, you won’t be perfect in the calculation but the aim is to be closest. Let’s increase the startup success rate.

If money is the only thing that makes startups successful then none of these Unicorn Startups would have shut down. Hence focus on your delivery and commitments. Happy clients are the real reason for success irrespective of being funded or otherwise.

I hope it helps, let’s improve the Unicorn Startups’ success rate together.

To know more, you can contact GraffersID, the best offshore software development center, to streamline your software development process and meet targets easily.

Frequently Asked Questions

1) What are “unicorns” in the context of failed startups?
Unicorns refer to privately held startup companies that have reached a valuation of over $1 billion. In the context of failed startups, “unicorns that failed” are companies that, despite once being highly valued, ultimately faced significant challenges and ultimately did not achieve long-term success.

2) Why did these unicorns fail?
Unicorns can fail for various reasons. Some common factors include poor business models, mismanagement of funds, fierce competition, changing market conditions, legal or regulatory issues, lack of market demand, internal conflicts, and failure to adapt to evolving consumer needs.

3) Are failed unicorns exclusive to any particular industry?
No, failed unicorns can be found across various industries. They span sectors such as technology, e-commerce, finance, transportation, and more. Each industry has its own unique challenges and factors that contribute to the success or failure of startups.

4) Can you provide examples of well-known unicorns that failed?
Certainly! Some examples of well-known unicorns that failed include Juicero, Theranos, Jawbone, Quibi, and Fab.com. These companies were once highly valued and hyped but faced significant obstacles that led to their downfall.

5) What can we learn from these failed unicorns?
Failed unicorns provide valuable lessons for entrepreneurs and investors. They emphasize the importance of sustainable business models, proper market research, effective leadership, and adaptable strategies. Understanding the reasons behind their failures can help entrepreneurs make better-informed decisions and investors identify potential risks.

6) Can failed unicorns ever make a comeback?
While it is rare, failed unicorns can potentially make a comeback. In some cases, failed companies have been acquired and restructured, allowing them to re-enter the market successfully. However, the chances of revival are relatively low, and it requires a significant shift in strategy, leadership, and market conditions.

7) What impact do failed unicorns have on the startup ecosystem?
Failed unicorns can impact the startup ecosystem in several ways. They may lead to decreased investor confidence, especially in similar companies or industries. However, failures also provide valuable lessons and insights, contributing to the overall learning and growth of the ecosystem.

8) How can entrepreneurs avoid the fate of failed unicorns?
Entrepreneurs can increase their chances of success by conducting thorough market research, validating their business ideas, building a strong and experienced team, seeking mentorship, being adaptable to changing circumstances, managing funds prudently, and staying focused on long-term sustainability rather than short-term hype.

9) Is the concept of unicorns still relevant despite failures?
Yes, the concept of unicorns as highly valued startups is still relevant. While some unicorns fail, many others have achieved tremendous success and become significant players in the business world. Failed unicorns should be seen as cautionary tales rather than an indication that the concept itself is flawed.

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Bringing an idea to execution, engaging target users, and driving profit. Isn’t the app in development is more than a tough task?

Developers strive to develop challenging applications that can lure the tech-savvy generation, however, in most cases their product backfires due to the wrong choice of the technology stack.

The competition in the mobile market is rising to the next level, and coming up with an off-putting and buggy application that is built using an outdated tech stack is a bad idea. This will not only hamper the reputation of the firm but also make your competitors succeed.

To prevent any danger to your brand value and deliver an outstanding experience, it is crucial to choose the right technology stack for mobile app development. The right technology stack will not only give life to your project but will also make it scalable and committed to the functional requirements. In addition to this, a wisely chosen technology stack results in lower costs and less time for mobile app development. 

Here are the top technology stacks that can you choose to create a top-quality application:

Native App Development

Native App Development includes using platform-specific software development kits, programming languages and other tools provided by operating system vendors. As a result, building native applications requires you to employ separate mobile app development technologies for each. Popular applications like Pokemon GO and Lyft utilize the native approach.

Technology Stack for iOS Apps in 2023

Here is a mobile app technology stack for building a native iOS application

Programming Languages

Objective C

Based on C, Objective C is a High-Level Language, developed for building iOS applications before the inception of Swift. This superset of C language is used by several app development companies to build applications for Mac, iPad, iPhone, Apple Watch, and more devices.

Some of the reasons which make Objective C the reliable option are:

  • Easy use of private APIs
  • Compatibility with C++
  • Massive community support
  • Plenty of third-party libraries
  • Highly approved
  • Simple and accessible to Apple technologies
Swift

Swift, a widely-used programming language for building top-notch iOS and OS X applications, is a multi-paradigm open-source language. A recent survey by Stack Overflow shows that Swift is the highly preferred language by the professional developer community.

Here are a few reasons why Swift is in the focus of attention:

  • Faster and better performance
  • Compatible with Objective C
  • Multi-device support
  • Dynamic libraries
  • Active community support
  • Safe and less prone to errors.
Toolkit: Apple Xcode:

If you are using Swift as the programming language for developing the native application, then you will need Apple Xcode as the toolkit. The full-featured development environment offered by the Apple Xcode toolkit lets you create mobile as well as desktop applications. Xcode comes with instrumentation and debugging tools, integrated support for Git repositories, a graphical editor to build user interfaces and integrated documentation.

SDK: iOS SDK

The iOS SDK includes an API that serves as a link between software applications and their platform. APIs can be built in several ways and include helpful programming tools.

Technology Stack for Android Apps in 2023

Here is the mobile app technology stack for building native Android application

Programming Language: Java

For Android App Development, Java is always at the top of the list. Java is an object-oriented programming language that comes with rich libraries and tools that make it easy to craft top-quality mobile applications. Here are some of the reasons which make Java one of the preferred languages to craft Android applications:

  • Portable and scalable
  • Highly secured
  • Automatic memory management
  • Multi-threading capability
  • Huge open source support ecosystem.

Programming Language: Kotlin

When compared to Java, Kotlin is new and came into existence in 2011. The language is a perfect solution that combines simplicity and power. 

Kotlin is not only a popular OOP language but also supports high-order functions and lambadas. It increases speed and makes it easier to perform day-to-day development tasks.

Here are the benefits of using Kotlin:

  • Language is concise and safe
  • Extension functions
  • Multi-platform
  • Active community
  • It helps to reduce bugs.

Toolkit: Android Studio and Android Developer Tools

Android Studio comes with performance tooling, code editing, flexible and instant build/deploy system. It helps you in building high-quality and unique applications.

Android Developer Tools offers Android-specific coding support and let developers use emulators, graphical UI builder, on-device debugging tools, and scriptable test automation support.

SDK: Android SDK

Android SDK uses components that can be downloaded separately. Third-party add-ons are also available for download.

Both Apple and Google provide app developers with interface elements, development tools and SDKs. 

Cross-Platform App Development

This approach means developing a mobile application that can be used flawlessly on multiple mobile platforms. A cross-platform approach allows developers to build an application using a single code base, which can run on different platforms simultaneously.

React Native + Javascript:

React Native is a Javascript framework, used for writing mobile applications that look native on both Android and iOS. React Native uses the same fundamental UI building blocks as Android and iOS apps. 

React Native introduces a radical, novel, and highly functional approach to constructing the user interface. With React Native, your application logic is written and runs in Javascript, and the application User Interface is completely native. The perfect examples of such applications are Skype and Instagram. 

You can also use the Typescript language to build a cross-platform application. Typescript provides excellent features for quick and easy error detection when writing React components. Generic components are of great benefit in the TypeScript toolbox. They provide an extra level of safety when tightening the feedback loop, writing components and helping you find errors quickly.

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Xamarin+C#

Xamarin is a tool for cross-platform mobile app development, which uses C# as the main-language for cross-platform development. C# is a statically typed language with IDE support and mature tooling. Apps written in C# are cross-compiled to native iOS and Android binaries. It’s even possible to use functionality from within C## code and device-specific APIs. For example, applications like Slack and Pinterest are built with Xamarin.

Hybrid App Development

Hybrid App Development makes use of web technologies such as HTML5, CSS and Javascript. The shared

Technology Stack for Hybrid Apps in 2023

There is a different framework for cross-platform app development. Here are a few of them:

Cordova/PhoneGap:

Apache Cordova is an open-source framework that is mainly employed to run Javascript-based applications. The functionality of Native devices is exposed via HTML-based applications and JavaScript APIs and hence access device-specific functionality like cameras and sensors. 

Developers mainly rely on CSS and HTML to build the user interface as PhoneGap supports libraries such as Angular JS, jQuery and Knockout.js.

While using Cordova, developers don’t rely only on HTML and CSS to build the user interface as it supports numerous frameworks and libraries such as Angular JS, jQuery and Knockout.js.

Ionic:

Ionic is an Angular JS-based framework, which is why it supports the community with a famous framework and shares a whole set of advantages. The critical ability to make hybrid applications have a native look is also well implemented with Ionic. 

With Ionic, you just need to design an application once and you can deploy it across Android, iOS, and Windows devices. The key benefits of using Ionic include:

  • Supports robust development
  • No need to code everything from scratch
  • Several ready-made plugins
  • AngularJS compatible
  • Engaged community

Which backend technologies are suitable for mobile app development projects?

There are several backend technologies suitable for mobile app development projects, each with its own strengths and use cases. The choice of backend technology depends on factors such as the complexity of the app, the team’s expertise, scalability requirements, and the specific features you need to implement. Here are some popular backend technologies used in mobile app development:

Node.js:

Node.js is known for its event-driven, non-blocking I/O model, which makes it well-suited for real-time applications and APIs. It’s often used with frameworks like Express.js to build RESTful APIs and handle server-side logic.

Ruby on Rails:

Ruby on Rails is a rapid development framework that promotes convention over configuration. It’s great for startups and small teams looking to quickly build and prototype their backend.

Python (Django or Flask):

Python is a versatile language with frameworks like Django and Flask that are commonly used for backend development. Django provides an extensive set of features for larger applications, while Flask is more lightweight and flexible.

Java (Spring Boot):

Java remains a popular choice for enterprise-level applications. Spring Boot, a framework built on top of the Java Spring framework, offers a robust ecosystem for building scalable and maintainable backend services.

PHP (Laravel):

PHP, despite its age, is still widely used for backend development. Laravel is a modern PHP framework that emphasizes elegant syntax and developer-friendly tools.

Firebase:

Firebase is a comprehensive backend-as-a-service (BaaS) platform provided by Google. It offers a variety of services such as real-time databases, authentication, cloud functions, and more, making it a great choice for startups and projects with rapid development cycles.

AWS (Amazon Web Services):

AWS provides a range of cloud services that can be used as the backend for mobile apps. Services like AWS Lambda, DynamoDB, and API Gateway allow you to build scalable and reliable backends.

Microsoft Azure:

Similar to AWS, Microsoft Azure offers a suite of cloud services suitable for building mobile app backends. Azure Functions, Azure SQL Database, and Azure App Service are commonly used services for mobile app backends.

Google Cloud Platform (GCP):

GCP provides services like Google Cloud Functions, Cloud Firestore, and Google App Engine that can be used for building mobile app backends.

Custom Backend:

Depending on the complexity of your project and the specific requirements, you might consider building a custom backend using programming languages like Go, Kotlin, or C#. This gives you complete control over your backend’s architecture and features.

Ultimately, the choice of backend technology should be based on your project’s needs, the skills of your development team, and your long-term goals for the mobile app. It’s important to consider factors like scalability, security, ease of maintenance, and the availability of third-party libraries and integrations when making your decision.

How important is it to optimize mobile apps for performance?

Optimizing mobile apps for performance is highly important for several reasons:

User Experience:

Performance directly impacts user experience. Slow-loading apps, laggy interactions, and delays can frustrate users and lead them to abandon your app. A smooth and responsive experience enhances user satisfaction and engagement.

Retention and Conversion:

Users are more likely to continue using an app and make in-app purchases or conversions if the app performs well. Poor performance can lead to higher bounce rates and lower retention rates.

App Store Rankings:

Both the Apple App Store and Google Play Store consider app performance as a factor in their rankings. Apps that provide a better user experience are more likely to receive positive reviews, higher ratings, and better visibility in search results.

Resource Efficiency:

Mobile devices have limited resources such as processing power, memory, and battery life. Optimizing performance helps minimize resource consumption, leading to longer battery life and better overall device performance.

Competitive Advantage:

In a crowded app market, delivering a high-performance app can give you a competitive edge. Users are more likely to choose and recommend apps that offer a smooth and seamless experience.

Global Reach:

In some regions, internet connectivity might be slower or less reliable. Optimizing your app’s performance can make it accessible to users in areas with varying levels of network quality.

Device Diversity:

There’s a wide range of mobile devices with varying specifications and capabilities. Performance optimization ensures that your app works well across different devices, leading to a larger potential user base.

App Size and Download Speed:

Optimized apps are often smaller in size, which means faster download and installation times. This is crucial, especially for users on slower connections or with limited storage space.

Updates and Maintenance:

As your app evolves, new features and updates can introduce performance issues if not managed properly. By prioritizing performance optimization, you can mitigate the risk of degradation in subsequent releases.

Developer Productivity:

Well-optimized code tends to be more organized and maintainable. This can lead to improved developer productivity and faster debugging, as performance-related issues are minimized.

To achieve optimal app performance, consider techniques like code optimization, efficient memory management, asynchronous operations, lazy loading, caching, and minimizing network requests. Regular performance testing and profiling can help identify bottlenecks and areas for improvement. Keep in mind that while performance is crucial, it should be balanced with other considerations such as functionality, design, and user needs.

Conclusion:

The aforementioned are the trending technology stack for mobile app development. You can choose the one which aligns best with your vision and the needs of your project. The informed choice will not only make a dominating presence in the web world but will also help you hit the moon.

Myriad companies around the world have gone remote due to the COVID-19 outbreak. But, what if your team is working remotely, how would you communicate with them?

How do you get project updates and how do you conduct meetings? Seems impossible, right?

The best remote teams rely on communication tools to collaborate efficiently with the teams.

What are Remote Communication Tools?

When your team works in the same physical office, communication is not a problem. You can hold meetings quickly or can even have a quick discussion with your team.

However, you can’t do this with the remote team, right?

Actually, you can.

Remote team communication tools help you collaborate effectively with distributed teams. They allow you to stay in touch and keep track of coworkers who are working from different parts of the world:

Most of these tools have communication features like:

  • Live chat: Enables instant messaging over the Internet.
  • File sharing and collaboration: To coordinate over files virtually
  • Video calls: For having a face to face conversations with the team.

Here are different types of communication tools you can use:

Instant Messaging Tools:

Need an urgent response from team members?

Instant messaging tools are the perfect options for sending messages with a blink of an eye. They help you instantly connect with your team for quick discussions and clarifications.

Let’s have a look at some of the best instant messaging tools for remote teams:

Slack:

Slack is an extremely popular instant messaging widely used to manage the working of remote employees. It has several communication features, including, but not limited to private chats, integrations with collaboration tools like Jira and ClickUp, and Audio and Video calls.

Slack Screenshot

Slack-Instant Messaging Tool

Here are some of the key features of the tool:

  • Channels:

With slack channels, conversations can be categorized into streamline communication. As each team or project can use their own channel, you don’t have to scroll through hundreds of texts to find important messages.

  • Voice Chats and Video Calls:

Not everything can be discussed over text, right?

Slack lets you quickly connect with your team members through audio or video calls. This feature is the best for impromptu conversations rather than in-depth conferences or meetings.

  • File Sharing:

Slack supports convenient file sharing from mobile devices and computers. Moreover, Slack can be easily integrated with Google Drive and Dropbox and let you share cloud files without leaving the Slack interface.

Pricing:

The base plan of Slack is priced at $3.20/month per user. It supports unlimited messages and 10 GB of storage per member. If you want more storage options and advanced features, then you can go for their higher plans.

Video Conferencing Tools:

Video Conferencing Tools help you interact face-to-face with your team members.

Video Conferencing can help you:

  • Explain tasks in detail
  • Host team discussions with prospects
  • Plan project roadmaps and hold reviews.

Here is one of the best video conferencing tools:

Zoom:

Zoom is a popular video conferencing tool that aids you in hosting webinars and HD calls. Zoom video call and screen sharing features, help team members conduct quick 1-on-1 check-ins and detailed meetings with team members.

 

Zoom-Video Conferencing Tool Screenshot

Key Features:

  1. Full-Featured Meetings:

Zoom meetings have a myriad of features for remote teams.

While they provide annotation features and basic screen sharing, you can also record meetings and search transcripts. Additionally, Zoom also has a cloud storage feature for video recordings if you don’t want to store them locally.

  1. Zoom Webinars:

With Zoom, hosting webinars is easier than ever.

You can host up to 10,000 attendees and host webinars to social media like YouTube and Facebook Live. You can also use interactive features like chats and polls to keep live audiences engaged.

Pricing

Zoom has a free plan that supports up to 100 participants and HD video/voice call features. The paid version of the tool starts at $14.99/month per host and also includes features like cloud recording.

Other than Zoom, there are also tools like Trello and Jira that help you conduct meeting with the remote team.

Collaboration Tools

Collaboration tools give your team virtual space through which they can work efficiently. Most collaboration tools also include project management and file-sharing features for seamless coordination between your projects.

Here is a closer look at the best remote team collaboration tools available:

ProofHub

ProofHub Screenshot

ProofHub is an easy-to-use project management software that simplifies your task management and team collaboration. It lets you stay in ultimate control of your teams, tasks, projects and communications with its powerful features.

Key features

  1. Task management 

ProofHub gives you flexibility in task management. You can create simple to-do lists to add tasks with deadlines and assign them to team members or you can create custom boards for agile workflow management. You can even comment, attach files and mention the team members.

  1. Real-time discussions

ProofHub provides a dedicated space to carry out discussions in real-time. You can create discussion topics and subscribe to your team members. In addition, you also have an in-built chat feature for quick communications.

  1. Online proofing

ProofHub has a powerful online proofing feature that lets you collaborate on design files in real-time. You can review files, add comments to share feedback, annotate using markup tools, proof and approve them from one place.

Pricing

ProofHub offers a free trial, and its Ultimate Control pricing plan with unlimited users is available at $89 / per month. Due to the COVID-19 outbreak, ProofHub is offering its project management software free for schools.

ClickUp

ClickUp is a project management tool that helps remote teams collaborate and communicate with ease. It can be easily integrated with tons of remote tools like Time Doctor, Slack, and GitHub. ClickUp is a top-notch solution for efficient team management.

ClickUp Screenshot

Key Features:

Here is a better look at why ClickUp’s is an excellent collaboration tool for your remote team:

  1. Comment Sections:

Want to send quick messages to your team members without leaving your current tasks?

ClickUp’s comment sections have a myriad of features for simpler and faster communication. It lets you reply to specific parts of a link or comment to another comment as reference.

You can even format the task, attach files and mention other users and tasks. This increases accessibility and helps your team take action efficiently.

  1. Assigned Comments:

ClickUp lets you instantly turn the comments into tasks. You can assign these comments to any of the team member to remain them of the allotted task. Once this is done, they can simply resolve the comment.

It is simple, quick and helps you instantly communicate the small tasks.

  1. Real-Time Collaboration:

ClickUp helps the remote coworkers to collaborate in real-time. The Collaboration Detection feature of the application lets you determine who else is viewing the same task as you.

In addition to this, multiple team members can edit and work on the same task at the same time with Collaborative Editing

Pricing

The free ClickUp plan offers far greater functionality like unlimited users as compared to paid versions of Trello and Basecamp. Unlimited integrations, advanced reporting features and storage, which cost $9/month per user.

Miscellaneous Tools

Miscellaneous tools are remote platforms that don’t actually fit into communication category, however, they assist remote workers to collaborate with their team. This can include tools that help in the project management with the remote team amid Corona.

Loom:

A loom is a screencasting tool that lets you record your screen and share it with other team members.

Loom Screenshot

What are screencasts?

Screencasts are look screenshots, but they are in video forms.

They are perfect to explain to your remote team the new tasks and assignments. Instead of dictating instructions, you can send a video to your team members, showing them how to use a particular function.

Key Features:

  1. Audio, Video, and Face Recording:

Loom can take screencasts as well as record your voice and display your face. This enables you to explain the projects clearly to your team, without setting up a video conference.

  1. Universal Compatibility:

The loom is available as an app for Windows, iOS and Mac. It also has a Chrome extension that works within a browser for Android devices. This lets your entire access the tool, despite of the system you are using.

Pricing:

Loom’s free plan supports an unlimited number of videos. Due to the Coronavirus outbreak, Loom is offering an unlimited number of videos till July 1, 2020.

Zapier:

Remote teams often make use of several communication apps depending upon their needs. This makes coordinating between the apps time-consuming and complex.

Zapier Screenshot

Zapier is a great automation tool that boosts your existing communication platform. By integrating multiple tools together and creating automated workflows, Zapier helps you make the most of your favorite tools.

Features

Send Reminders and Tasks

Zapier enables you to automate tasks and reminders for your team based on particular triggers. For example, you could receive a reminder to follow up every time someone replies to your email.

This eliminates the need for you to remember these things, hence boosting your productivity in the long run.

Pricing:

Zapier’s free plan can automate 100 tasks/per month. The paid plan of Zapier includes more tasks and features starting at $24.99/month.

Coming up with a great idea is hard, but what’s harder is finding and hiring the right app developer that can turn your idea into reality. There are around 23 million people working on web and mobile app development worldwide.

If you pick one of them without much thought, your idea might not turn into the big success you desire. In this article, you will find the step-by-step process of hiring the right developer.

No matter, whether you are planning to hire a freelancer, a mobile application development company, or an offshore app developer, there are a few general considerations to hiring any of these resources.

Before you start searching for developers, ask yourself a few questions. What specific business challenge would you like to solve by hiring a business developer?

There are three common scenarios:

  1. You are looking forward to implementing technology that you never used before. For example, say that you want to rewrite a website in a particular programming language. You can wait until your developers learn that language or hire a developer from an offshore web and mobile app development company.
  2. You already have an in-house team, but need more specialists. Depending upon the requirement of your project, you can hire an in-house professional app developer or a freelancer through an outsourcing company.
  3. You want to develop a project from scratch. This scenario is common for both existing businesses and startups. Startup owners usually have budget constraints and thus opting to outsource a project is a reliable option for them.

Here are the benefits of Hiring a dedicated developer

Existing businesses want to automate business processes and thus they can go for any one of the options i.e. hire a dedicated or in-house team.

There is no denying the fact that business owners want to release a new app quickly and without investing much of their hard-earned money. And no doubt, the app should be of the highest quality. At this point, the question arises whether you should outsource the project, or hire an in-house vs Remote team.

Let’s have a look at both, the pros and cons of both options:

As the name suggests, the in-house team means hiring a group of developers that work with you in the same office. The in-house team provides you with the following advantages:

  • They will be working in the same workplace as you, hence they will be possessing a deep understanding of your company, your product, and your corporate culture.
  • Easy communication and quick responses to your inquiries.

Want to know How to hire an offshore developer?

But this option also comes with a wide range of disadvantages, such as:

  • You will be hiring full-time employees and thus you have to pay them a full-time salary, even if they have no tasks or take sick leaves.
  • You need to take care of office supplies, workspaces, equipment, and so on.
  • Just by hiring an on-site team you can remain assured of effective work and quick response to your inquiries. So, if you want to meet the deadlines and get the project to be completed without any flaws, you will also be required to hire a manager.  This in turn will increase your expenses.

Earlier companies were skeptical about outsourcing, but nowadays it has become a common practice. While outsourcing, another company takes care of your development project and you don’t have to get involved in every step of the process.

Want to know how to hire a senior NodeJS Developer for your startup

Here are a few benefits of an outsourcing development project:

  • When outsourcing, you can hire coders from any part of the world, which means access to more talent.
  • You can quickly add or replace the team members, which will help you start your development quickly.
  • You only till the time the developer is working on your project and there are no expenditures on things like office space and costly equipment.
  • You can hire experienced developers, leading to product development as per your needs.
Cost Savings from Outsourcing
Cost Savings from Outsourcing

Lack of face-to-face communication is the major drawback of outsourcing. But this challenge can be easily overcome with tools like communication software like Slack, conferencing tools like Zoom, and project tracking software like Jira.

You can also consider hiring a ready-made dedicated team to automate the processes. Here is a guide to help you understand how to set up an offshore development team in India.

Why Hire a Company over Freelancer

Why Hire a Company over Freelancer

The answer to this question depends on whether you can want to manage the development process and the degree to which you can lead the project on your side. If you are looking forward to hiring a freelancer, then think twice, it is quite intimidating to manage people located thousands of miles away.

Hiring a freelancer comes with various challenges, such as:

  • Freelancers work on several projects simultaneously, so there is the risk that the developer won’t meet deadlines.
  • There are also chances that freelance developers can suddenly leave the project. After all, there is no CTO or manager involved.

On the contrary, with an app design agency, you get designers, QA specialists, and developers, who deliver you, project management services. Hiring an agency comes with benefits like established communication channels, methodology, streamlined control, and quality control.

Another great advantage of making a deal with an offshore web developer is they have already come across development challenges and know how to overcome them.

Over the years, the different members of the team accumulate knowledge which evolves into development approaches, ready-made components, and best practices. Unless and until have a small task, we recommend hiring a web development company over a freelancer

You have defined your goals and made up your mind to go for the outsourcing development team. Now, comes the question of how you will find the developers.

1. Firstly, define the destination

North America, India, the UK and Ukraine are the most popular outsourcing destinations. Let’s learn about them more.

North America is the house for approximately half of the IT specialists in the world. Headquarters of leading IT companies are located in the US, even if they have their R&D in a different region of the world. Thus, the United States could be one of the good choices for building your offshore development.

Want to know Why Outsourcing Software Development to India is a Success?

However, it is important to note here that building an offshore development team in the US can be a bit heavy in your pocket.

India is one of the preferred choices for building an offshore development team. Business in India is concentrated in so-called IT clusters, which also include the

Silicon Valley of Bangalore. According to the recent stats by Evans Data Corporation, by the year 2023, India will be ahead of the US by the number of developers.

Countries like the UK and Ukraine also hold a good share of web developers. The only thing that keeps India above all the three countries is you can find highly enthusiastic and skilled developers in India at quite an affordable cost.

RegioniOS ($/hour)Android ($/hour)
North America150168
Australia110110
UK7070
South America4334
Eastern Europe3535
India3026
Indonesia1112

2. Conduct Research

Here is where you can find the right offshore development team for your business:

  • Freelance Website:

These websites can prove resourceful if you are looking for a freelancer. However, they are less helpful when you are looking for an outsourcing company that provides full-cycle development. Upwork, People Per Hour and Guru are some of the reliable solutions for finding web and mobile app developers.

  • GitHub:

The best developer should not only be perfect in his designs but should also be strong in coding. GitHub is a platform where you can check samples of source code put by various developers.

  • B2B Directories:

B2B Directories generally contain lists of companies that are categorized by their ratings, specialization and location. Clutch.co and Goodfirms.co are some of the best platforms where you can find the finest app developer in the country of your choice.

  • Design Communities:

You can check design communities like Dribble and Behance to find some creative and unique designs. These two communities are the best places to find a great design team. 

Want to Know how and what cost to hire a WordPress developer

3. Make a list of candidates and analyze them

After you have found a list of developers that can make your dream come, it is time to carefully analyze them. There are several things to check while choosing an app developer for your project:

Once you are done preparing the list of candidates, you should create a list of questions that will aid you in making a wise decision. Here is a list of some crucial questions that will help you find reliable developers:

  • What feedback they have received from their client?
  • What market segment do they focus on?
  • Do they have experience in creating apps for your niche?
  • What are the technologies they work on?
  • How will they ensure the quality of development?

Here is a step-by-step guide to hiring ReactJS Developer for your startup

4. How will the development process run?

This question won’t arise if you hire one developer, however, if you need a team to develop your product, try to find a company that has a streamlined development process.

Here are a few things to consider while choosing a development team:

  • The company’s SDLC:

SDLC or Software Development Lifecycle is a framework that defines tasks performed at each stage of the development process. Look for a company that has a clearly defined SDLC that adjusts to the client’s needs and provides stability during app development.

  • Project Management Framework:

Project management framework and methodologies are also crucial to a well-structured SDLC. The most famous frameworks and methodologies are Agile, Scrum, Waterfall, and Rational Unified Process. The right choice of the framework will define how quickly a team responds to changes, while still delivering product on time.

  • Communication and transparency:

Communication and transparency, both are crucial, especially when you are opting for outsourcing. A good team should provide you with a kick-off meeting, demo presentations, call upon request, and sprint reports. Many companies use project management like Jira, where you can constantly check the progress of your project.Looking for Dedicated Developer

5. What about the high load?

Your app may become so popular that thousands of people will be using it simultaneously. Ask your potential vendors how they will deal under circumstances of high load. A development company should thoughtfully clone the app server and pick the tech stack.

After you have carefully analyzed the list of developers, it is time to make a decision and hire app developers. Before jumping to a conclusion, it is advised to clear all the controversial questions with your potential developers. Get an answer to all your queries to define whether the company you are hiring can fulfill your business needs.

Every project has different requirements and demands. And, when you are building an application, it is important to choose the technology which is most appropriate for your project.

In this article, we are bringing Python vs. Node.js comparison to learn the downsides, benefits, and use cases so that you can make an educated decision.

First, let’s see why choosing the right tech stack is crucial.

Programming languages and frameworks were designed to cater to specific project goals. That’s the main criterion when choosing a language for your project.

Don’t go for popularity alone. For example, technologies like Python and R are a good fit for Big Data applications, while others like Java and C are commonly used for building large desktop applications.

The choice of technology should be deliberate and based on the requirement, such as:

  • The type of project: Game, payment software or business application.
  • Product type: A dynamic messenger or data analytics platform
  • Application geography: Whether you want an application for the local area, entire country, or world
  • Budget: How much you can spend on developer salaries and technology to support your product in the long run.
Node.js vs Django

It is essential to consider every feature of your future product while choosing the right technology. By comparing Python vs Node.js, we are bringing to your light how these two widely used technologies vary in their advantages and areas of application.

Python:

Oriented in the early 90s, Python is still one of the flexible, innovative, and versatile technologies, thanks to its continually developing libraries and innovative implementations. For example, Python is your go-to language for data science, AI projects, and machine learning. 

Moreover, Python is one of the largest communities that contribute to improving the language to handle modern-day programming tasks. Python is widely used for different projects like travel, healthcare, and Fintech. Time and time again, Python has proved itself to be a robust technology in handling the various challenges that come up with such projects.

Python Usage
Software Developers of All Ages prefer Python

Here are some of the prominent Pro and Cons of Python.js:

Python Pros

Python reduces time to market:

Python allows you to develop a prototype or an MVP in a limited time frame, hence reducing Time to Market. Python allows maintaining several iterations at a time, owing to its rapid development methodology. Moreover, its Don’t Repeat Yourself principle aids in reusing the parts of the code.

These Python features allow you to go back and forth with the consumers, gather feedback, make improvements, and scale your prototype into a fully-fledged web application.

It has a simple syntax:

One of the main reasons why developers like Python is that it has a simple syntax that allows developers to express concepts in just a few lines of code. It also makes it easier to solve errors and debug the code. Python is mostly about code readability. Furthermore, it is simple enough for the client to understand.

It has a wide range of development tools:

A popular code editor, Sublime Text, provides support for Python coding, syntax extensions as well as additional editing features. Powerful web frameworks, available with Python, aid in simplifying the process and allow developers to focus on the logic of the application. Django, a full-stack framework is widely used for all kinds of simple and complex applications.

It has a large community:

Comparing Python and Node.js, Python is a more mature open-source language, without the largest user communities. The language has got an incredible number of contributors, from junior to experienced.

This means it is easy to find and hire Python developers and it is also effortless to get support from the active community to share solutions and improve the language.

Python Cons

Python is single-flow:

Python has a slower speed of execution as compared to languages such as C or Swift. Python, hence, doesn’t make a preferable option for a project where speed is a major concern.

Weak in mobile computing:

Python is considered weak at mobile computing, though it is great for developing server and desktop platforms. That is why only a few smartphone applications are written in Python.

Application of Python:

Whether small or large, simple or complex, Python is one of the preferred options for all sorts of projects. That includes desktop user interfaces, business applications, gaming, scientific apps, and educational platforms:

Python is mostly used for:

  • Data Science: This includes Machine Learning such as Tensorflow, Data Analysis such as Apache Spark, and Data Visualization such as Matplotlib. 
  • Web Development: Web development frameworks such as Flask, Django, CherryPy, and Bottle.
  • Gaming: 3D game engines such as PySoy and actual games such as Vega Strike and Civilization-IV.
  • Business Applications: Reddit was written in Python and Netflix’s engine is also built-in Python.
  • Scientific Applications: 3D modeling software such as FreeCAD and finite element software like Abaqus.
  • DevOps and Automatic Scripts: Small apps for automating simple tasks.

Read Also: PHP or Python: Which Language to Choose for Server Side Development?

Node.js:

Node.js allows JavaScript that can be used for both back-end and front-end development. Node.js is also utilized to resolve compatibility issues. Launched in 2009 and popularly known as a server-side scripting language, it has gained immense popularity in a short span of time.

Node.js
Which frameworks do developers prefer

Here are some of the prominent Pro and Cons of Node.js:

Node.js Pros

Faster performance:

Node.js is faster when compared to Python. Node.js is based on the Google V8 engine, which makes it the best option for developing chatbots and similar real-time applications.

Enables full-stack development:

Just with one team of JavaScript developers, you can get the whole application ready, both front-end and back-end. Thus, it aids in reducing costs.

If you are looking to Hire NodeJS Developers, you can consult GraffersID

Best for developing real-time apps:

The event-driven architecture allows you to develop web games and chat applications.

Node.js Cons

It requires a clear architecture:

Node.js is an event-driven environment, which means that it can run several events at a time; however, the relationship between the events should be well-written.

Not suitable for CPU-intensive tasks:

A heavy computation request will block the processing of other tasks and can slow down an application written in a node. Therefore, it is not regarded as suitable for projects based on data science.

Underdeveloped documentation:

Python has comprehensive and up-to-date documentation; however, documentation with Node.js is lagging. Furthermore, there are no tools and core libraries, as there are too many alternatives, hence it becomes difficult to choose the right one.

Read Also: Swift vs Flutter: Which is Better for iOS App Development?

When to use Node.js:

Node.js is the go-to technology for developing gaming platforms, forums, and Ad services.

It is good at handling projects with applications that comes with high-speed and intense I/O, content management system and other such applications, eCommerce platforms, and peer-to-peer marketplace.

Node is used in a different types of web applications such as:

  • Business applications like eBay and Walmart
  • Payment systems such as PayPal
  • Entertainment platforms such as Netflix
  • Social platforms such as LinkedIn and Trello.

Node.js and Python’s pros, cons, and use cases, clearly show that both languages cater to different needs. Node.js is used for solutions, whereas Python is generally employed for real-time applications that require more speed.

Summing Up

Python and Node.js, both have their lists of advantages and drawbacks. The application of both languages also differ, so, when you are using choosing Node.js and Python in 2023, have a look at all the pros and cons as well as the needs of your project.

According to recent data by Statista, mobile apps are expected to generate a gigantic revenue of $ 188.9 billion by the end of the year 2020. This data clearly shows the enormous growth that mobile application development is growing to receive. The number of mobile applications is expected to rise to 258.2 billion by 2022; hence, it is quite evident that businesses can gain huge benefits through mobile apps.

While there is considerable growth in the usage of mobile app businesses, not every app out there achieves success. In a recent survey by AppsFlyer, it has been found that around 30% of applications get uninstalled within 30 days of being downloaded. This means out of 10 installed apps, 3 get uninstalled. Another survey by Localytics shows that around 80% of mobile app users stop using an application within three months of its download.

Number of Apps with Over a Million Downloads vs Total Number of Apps

The above stats clearly show that although the mobile industry is booming, not every app is appreciated by customers. After all, there are 5 million total applications in major app stores, but only 32K apps reach the mark of 1M downloads. To make sure that your app covers the steep difference in the number of total applications and the number of successful applications, it is important to avoid some mistakes.

Here is a list of mistakes to be avoided to make sure that your application is not among one of those apps that users forget to open:

1. Not identifying the needs:

This is one of the biggest mistakes while bringing an app into existence. Not doing an analysis of the market and needs of your target audience is the same as serving Sausages to vegans-nobody is going to eat it.

You have a great app idea, but you simply put your money into it without understanding the need of your audience and doing market research. App development requires a big investment, hence it is recommended to take things slow.

No matter whether you are a startup or an established brand, the first step to follow while going for app development is to recognize the pain point of customers. Identify the pain point of customers and then develop an application that cures this pain.

In this oversaturated market of mobile applications, realize the real needs of the customer and then devise a plan for the application. This will make you stand out from your competitors.

2. Outsourcing your project to the right app development company:

Just as there are different types of applications in the market such as Educational apps, eCommerce apps, Dating apps, Financial apps, and more, there are categories of mobile developers also. And, all the mobile app development companies also differ from each other.

Benefits of Outsourcing Mobile App Development
Benefits of Outsourcing Mobile App Development

Before choosing an iOS/android app development company, you need to fix the budget, the complexity, the platforms, and the domain of your app. After this, research for the right company to outsource app development. Here is how to find and hire the right app developer.

3. Underestimating the Total Budget:

As mentioned above, app development incurs a big investment. So, before you begin the app development process, make sure to understand the detailed scope of the resources and budget that you would require in the complete process.

Determining the overall budget of app development includes evaluating development hours, material, space, marketing, overheads, operation team, etc. In other words, these aspects require a considerable investment. Hence, it is crucial to estimate your overall budget beforehand to make the app development smooth and error-free. Make sure you also divide your budget for App marketing too.

4. Ignoring the importance of MVP:

Making an MVP is a beneficial idea that can save your app from being a disaster. An MVP or Minimum Viable Product offers you a chance to test your product in real-time market conditions, where you have daily users to evaluate the performance of the app.

Why MVP
Why Develop Minimum Viable Product?

With MVP, you will be spending as few resources as possible to engage your first users, get feedback and understand your target market. It is important to note here that MVP is not synonymous with a primitive or unfinished product that is created in a hurry. By creating an MVP, you can better understand the needs and expectations of your audience, and design an app that fits it. It is also important to choose the right platform for building an MVP.

5. Building a Poor UI:

One of the biggest mistakes to avoid while developing an application is not paying close attention to developing the UI of your application. The user interface is the face of your application, which will be held responsible for pulling the attention of users.

Since there are a plethora of applications available for accomplishing the same task; users are highly impatient while deciding to keep an app on their mobile devices.

A good UI is the user retention key for your mobile application. Effective UI/UX design aids in winning the consumer’s confidence and making them use your application for finding what they are looking for. The number of users you are getting on your application can measure the success of UI/UX.

Components of UI/UX design
Components of UI/UX Design

For a small venture or start-up, UI and UX hold great importance as the first impression lasts long, and using UI and UX design can break or make the recognition.

While designing a UI, make sure to:

  • Never start designing an app without an App flowchart
  • Pay attention to the resolution
  • Avoid making an animation for into, because an unskippable into can make them uninstall the application
  • Use things that keep users engaged.
  • Add a Gesture-based interface.

6. Overcrowding the app with features. 

Thinking that by adding more features, you can make users appreciate your app is one of the biggest mistakes. Many app developers and businesses strive to make their applications “feature-rich” and in this process, they feed their app with excessive features. This is one of the most common mistakes that app developers and businesses make.

On the other hand, if we go by the user feedback, adding too many features to an application makes it cumbersome, without adding much value to the user experience.

It is better to have limited and highly targeted features to make your mobile purposeful and easy to understand. In addition to this, having too many features makes the app bulky and adds to the load time. This way you can preserve the time, effort, and resources that get wasted in adding these extra features.

For example, if you are planning to create a dating app, here are some of the essential features that your app should possess:

7. Not Having Cross-Platform Strategy:

Not developing an efficient cross-platform strategy is another mistake that is needed to avoid. Gone are the days when you require developing an application for only a single platform.

Cross Platform Framework
Cross Platform Framework

Today, there are a number of cross-platform app development tools, through which users can build applications for both Android and iOS devices. Developers can use a single source code to deploy an application on multiple platforms. PhoneGap is one such tool that can be used for building cross-platform applications.

Although there are some drawbacks to developing a cross-platform application, however, when you have a limited budget, it is the most viable option.

8. Communicating Unclear Briefings:

It is important to communicate your expectations clearly at the beginning itself. 

The best way to avoid miscommunication is to explain clearly what features you need within the application and better to convey your message with the help of visuals. Start by creating diagrams, flowcharts, and sample sketches of the screens so that designers and developers can get an idea.

Explain each element in detail, what should happen when a person clicks a button, where the call-to-action buttons should be placed, which screen should appear after a particular activity, and more.

This will aid you in setting up a realistic budget as the developers know exactly what is required to be accomplished and how much it would take to achieve the goals.

9. Not doing the testing:

Users out there always look for an application that can provide them with glitch-free performance. A flawlessly performing app is required to make sure that user retention is high. 

Apart from simple testing of an application, it is crucial to test it over a wide range of devices to ensure a good first impression. It is better to know what are strategies your web development company follows for testing.

It is also important to note here that when it comes to testing an application, the task should be performed by the professional app-testing team.

10. Unplanned market launch of the app:

One of the biggest mistakes in mobile development is made during the Market launch of an application.

Following are the important steps to follow before launching your mobile application:

  • Validate your MVP before investing in a launch. This will provide you with an idea of what changes are required to be made.
  • Use professional help for optimizing the App Store
  • Pay extra attention to the onboarding process
  • Never neglect a good User Experience

Summing Up

Mobile app development mistakes can significantly affect the success of your mobile application. Take a cue from the common but some of the blunder mistakes stated above and make sure to avoid these mistakes while pursuing the app development process.

Keep in mind that app development is all about engaging with the customers in a way that will help you grow your business and get the desired return on investment. Therefore, it is crucial to pay attention to aspects like requirement analysis, need identification, customer testing, app launch, app testing, etc. The feedback you get from here will help you reach new heights in your business.

What made Zoom the biggest player in video conferencing apps?

The above question has led a lot of businessmen, IT enthusiasts, and developers worth pondering.
Has the pandemic helped Zoom rise to be the second most downloaded app in the world? Let’s take a glance at the figures before delving any further into this topic.
If the figures are to be believed, then we are already nodding our heads in affirmation.

The world is battling a pandemic and to protect ourselves, WE among the ten million are working from home with using the Zoom app to connect with colleagues or clients.

The popular teleconferencing tool was already a dominant name in the video conferencing market, but to adapt to the current social distancing norms, it has become a household name. Now you may wonder why? Well, it can be due to easy connecting approach with your friends, relatives, co-workers and the second reason can be the various advantages it proffers to its users. If you are already familiar with the working of the app, then you might know that it is providing more time to interact as compared to its counterparts.

Some insights supporting the facts-

Moreover, if we have a glance at the stats, we may find that around May 15th 2020, Zoom’s market capitalization witnessed an upsurge skyrocketing to exact $48.8 billion only in the three months of lockdown. And due to its innumerable benefits such as easy to use interface it has been used by people of all walks of like. The doctors are using it for a team meeting, the offices are using to plan the important discussions or brainstorming sessions and the educators are employing the same to conduct online classes.

Therefore, the figures have increased from 10 million in December to a whopping figure of 300 million meetings in April 2020. As of July 2020, it was found out that the worth of Zoom is more than the biggest and renowned airlines. It can also be due to the airline’s operations witnessing a standstill and hold due to the current pandemic. But, no matter what, the revenues generated by Zoom alone are far more as compared to the 7- biggest airlines in the world. The firm counted over 300 million daily users & the numbers of those paying to use the app have also increased gradually.

But now you may wonder how such software even came in existence?
Mr Yuan did not first plan to create Zoom for the general public. The Chinese born software engineer faced doubts when he tried to pitch the investors. Some did not even believe in his innovation, and few of them felt that there was already Microsoft and Cisco providing such services. What made Zoom wired differently to make such an impact?

It also has competitors who are giant players namely, Microsoft, Google and Jio. Speaking of Google Duo, it is currently working to increase the number of group participants to the number 32 or more. Moreover, seeing the current growth in market, Facebook has mapped the possibilities and has invested in around $5.7 billion to improve digital services across the globe. With such competitors, Zoom team indeed have much to worry about the serving on their plate.

And, if statistics are to be believed, people prefer Zoom more than its already existing counterparts. Did you know Zoom has in-built beautification filters that can help you look more appealing and flawless on your office video meetings? To add to this, it also provides you with a plethora of background options, no matter where you are, you can always opt Zoom.
Let’s have a look at the advantages this app has to offer to its users, all around the globe.

1. Video conferencing anytime, anywhere:

The Zoom allows you to change or alter the background accordingly so you can connect with your team no matter where you are.
Moreover, it is built in a way that it works with wireless, wired and a Wi-Fi network for no hassle.
The participants can join via a link, telephonic dial-in or even H.323/SIP room system.

2. Team management tool:

Zoom has a feature that it allows you to organize meetings, webinars, plan a meeting and share a link with the participants so that they can be present before time, avoiding delay.
Not only this, it allows you to connect with over 40 participants over once in a not so paid trial.
You can interact with the means of videos, chat and share opinions or share the slides with the participants.

3. Software-based collaboration solution in their custom-designed Zoom rooms:

It is ideal for any business because it provides features such as-
A Zoom room supports MP4A or MP4 recording that can offer required high-quality audio. Speaking of which, it provides its users with dynamic audio detection features that improve the standard of any virtual meeting.

4. It allows the host to one touch controls:

If you are an admin of a Zoom call or meeting, then according to your requirement or convenience you can mute your participants in just one go. Therefore it omits the chances of any other voice distribution and puts you in a feel of the virtual video meeting.
5. It offers the feature of high quality recordings-
If you don’t want to miss on any important point then you can always record the video meet for the future use. It can be done because of its HD quality MP4 as well as MP4A formats.
6. It is indeed a powerful collaboration tool-
Do you know Zoom allows a feature of white boarding? Yes, you can take notes, or even draw to make your participants understand better and share the same.
Not only this, if you need to show a presentation or explain using some stats you can always do by opting the screen sharing feature.

7. And did you know, it offers budget-friendly plans?

Zoom has everything in store for the free users as well as the buyers of its meeting plan.
If you are thinking that the meeting should have brainstorming session after your presentation, and it might take more than 40 minutes you can always choose a plan.
The plans are very reasonable priced and it allows 1 hour of video meet with 1000 participants in one go.

With such advantages, we wonder what went wrong.

Well, the journey has not been a smooth sailing one for the company. With the series of Zoom-bombing events such as the one where Zoom users found themselves less safe while operating a video conference. They claimed that the software or the app breached their privacy and shared the data to Facebook. All the apps that we use today provide us with a notification that it is end-to-end encrypted, but what about Zoom?

There was an incident where a group of uninvited users hijacked one of the Zoom meetings and thus raising questions on its overall security. With such prevalent issues surfacing and doubts popping up in the heads of their users, people are finding themselves in two minds. They are thinking to switch to the popular Internet giants, such as Microsoft and Google. But, wait, does this thought rings a bell for you?

The need of an hour is to understand the necessity, grab the opportunity and innovate! The residents of this planet are battling and adopting a new culture called the new normal. It paved the way and thus leads to the rise of video communication tools that assure us that our data is protected no matter what the cost.

If you are a business and looking for an opportunity to make a name for yourself, then this is the time. After all, success comes to those who know how to cater to the needs of their audience. But, you may be wondering if creating an app like Zoom is easy?

What all requirements do you need to have to design an app that not only befits to the user’s video conferencing needs but also provides them with a plethora of advantages that their counterparts failed to offer?

The questions or the doubts we are facing are countless. But fret not, with the right offshore development team, you can easily find answers. The right company will guide you throughout the app-making process and will fill you in with concerned responses.

Speaking of which, the preferred app development company should have a team of experts mainly-
1 Project Manager
2. 1-2 iOS Developers
3. 1-2 Android Developers
4. 1-2 UI/UX Designers
5. 1 Backend Developers
6. 2 QA Specialists
7. 6. Tech lead

Additional things to keep in mind-

The person guiding the team should have analyzed and studied the market thoroughly. And when in need, should plan the layout for all the team members to stick by. Moreover, if you have all the experienced men in the team, right tools, and a perfect map, then it may take near to about 1400- 1500 man-hours to create an app like Zoom.
Once the app is created, run quality checks. Moreover, do not forget to add your value to this app. It will be its selling point or USP. It will be the one that helps you to cover the shortcomings of the former app while providing the baffled users with something of value. If you are looking for an expert guide who will consult and provide you with the state of art app development services in India then look no further and contact us!

The lockdown has disturbed the economies of many countries around the world. It will take time when businesses will get back on their feet. The Pandemic has also brought several opportunities for startups in “Digital Space.” such as mobile app development ideas for startups, starting a company, and several others.

Here are some of the fantastic Mobile App Development Ideas for Startups that they can consider during the Coronavirus outbreak:

Pharmacy Apps:

An essential thing for a human being in this modern era is health, and the present time is the best example of it. People are seeking medications, vitamins and protein through which they can stay healthy and save from infection.

It is an excellent opportunity to build a great mobile application and help people in need by connecting with the best pharma stores and doctors in these critical situations.

Read Also: How to Develop a HIPAA Compliant m-Health App

Grocery Apps:

The lockdown situation has severely affected our lifestyle and to stay healthy, it has become crucial to include healthy food in our diet. Due to the coronavirus outbreak, people are avoiding going out of their home for grocery shopping. They are looking for facilities through which they can get groceries with contact-less delivery and online payment options.

If you are a startup in the same niche, you can plan for building a user-friendly mobile application that can deliver the necessities.

Read Also: How much Does it Cost to Develop Grocery Delivery App like Instacart?

Food Delivery Apps:

Due to lockdown in almost every part of the world, many people are not able to reach their homes or are still stranded. A startup that is offering home-cooked meals in this critical time and serving the needy will not only get a good number of customers but also gain a boost in brand value.

Furthermore, amid Coronavirus your brand needs to maintain personal hygiene and promise extreme supervision during the preparation of the food. The delivery staff you are hiring must follow contactless delivery guidelines to stop the spread of disease.

Read Also: Scope of On-Demand Service Apps and Its Market Trends

Fitness Apps:

“Health is Wealth”- the saying has started making more sense to the people today. People have become more conscious about their health and even when they are at home, they are looking for ways to stay fit and healthy. Moreover, fitness enthusiasts out there are missing gyms and training centers, and looking for applications through which they can carry out their daily schedule. Having a dedicated mobile application can do wonders. 

Startups ventures have a great opportunity in this domain as the live broadcast of yoga, meditation and fitness classes are surging at a great pace. 

Read Also: How to Create a Fitness App that Thrives in the Market

Learning or Education Apps:

It is rightly said that learning is a life-long process, hence it is an excellent opportunity for businesses or startups to make a difference in the industry. To emerge as the best startup organization, you can launch Mobile App with advanced features and that connect the world’s best knowledge seekers, trainers and learners on one digital platform or could also plan of building Video Conferencing App. 

You can also plan to launch an advanced feature mobile application that works as an encyclopedia for learners. Try building an app that could serve as the best tool to share, help and grow together.

Have an app Idea

Wrapping Up

The ideas shared above will help you grow your business through a digital transformation or give a boost to your startup idea. The mobile app development industry is offering startups the best opportunity to turn up and thrive in your business in Virtual Space. In addition to this, now is also a time to think about how as a company you can add value to the nation. Thus, it is the right time to roll up your sleeves and inspire the world to enhance digital connectivity. 

Gone are the days when advertising was considered as the prominent marketing to promote a brand. With rapid transformations in the digital landscape, having a strong presence over the mobile phone has become an essential element to thrive. Mobile apps have emerged as an effective marketing solution, which not only automates the business but also provides better customer service. Thus, brands are hiring dedicated remote developers for developing mobile apps for their businesses.

The brands with the right application at their behest, do not face a struggle in establishing themselves, instead, app enables them to foster a deep connection with netizens of all demographics and age groups.

Why brands should think about building an app?

According to a recent study, people spend 70% of their time on a mobile phone, out of which 90% of the time is spent on applications. People have their smartphones in hand wherever they go, which implies that you can reach your target audience almost anytime and anywhere through a mobile app. 

Brands have realized the power of mobile applications and that goes simply beyond selling any product or service. Apps have opened up new marketing avenues, and provide businesses with an opportunity to engage in creative ways and turn them into customers. 

Desktop internet usage is dropping and internet usage over the mobile phone is growing significantly. It is estimated that by 2021, there will be more than 7 billion users worldwide. Mobile apps are an excellent marketing channel for brands. It helps companies convey brand messages, connect with the audience, keep users engaged and build customer loyalty in a crowded marketplace.

What makes Mobile Apps- An Efficient Marketing Tool?

There are countless ways for how mobile apps to help in the growth of businesses. They humanize companies, improves the interaction between brands and customers and increase sales.

Here is what makes a mobile application, an efficient marketing tool:

Enhances Brand Awareness:

Business often tends to find ways through which they can reach their customers and market their brand. Apps enhance visibility and brand awareness and strategically increase the customer base. 

Once, your prospective customers have installed applications on a mobile device, users will come across the brand frequently, which will improve visibility and awareness. The more often the user interacts with the brand’s application, the more are the chances of them buying your products and availing the services offered by you. 

If you want to get users talking about your app, then you must try to include features that your target audience is looking for.

The app should be highly interactive and keep users coming back to it. Push notifications also play a crucial role in bringing users back to their app. The more people are interacting, the more chances of them purchasing your product.

Boosts Engagement:

Engaging with your customer is crucial if you want your brand name to pop up as soon as they think of purchasing something which you offer.

Regardless of the type of application you have, invest in personalized in-app content. One way to make sure that happens is to study the customer personas to better understand the type of content that works for the audience.

Another effective strategy to boost engagement is Push Notifications. With compelling one-liner sent through push notifications, you can capture user attention and make them check what’s new in your application. Push notification must be of benefit to the user, even if it is a copy or a promotion. Make sure you don’t overdo the competition as it might irritate the users.

Collects Data

An effective strategy revolves around analyzing customer behavior. If your app matches up with the user’s requirements, then they will likely share the data with you.

You can make your mobile application as a brand marketing channel to monitor users, engagement levels, locations, mobile app usage, their shopping behavior, favorite hours and much more.

This aids you in collecting valuable user insights, understand the needs of the customer, and improve product accordingly.

Here are a few ways to collect user data:

Onboarding: Set up a list of the basic questionnaire, which includes pertinent information about preferences, age and more.

In-app Behavior: Keep track of the marketing process by analyzing and monitoring user’s in-app behavior. Apps make it easy for the brand to collect user data based on the reviews and purchases of the product.

By offering bonuses: Bonuses are an ideal way to swap bonuses, discounts or special offers as a reward for filling the details or completing the questionnaires. 

Using this data, you can evaluate user behavior and change the brand development strategy. It is also crucial to include the review/feedback section. This will bring into your notice what customers want from your app.

Increases Customer Royalty

It is a great marketing strategy to reward frequent customers. Getting customer loyalty is challenging for brands. A mobile application is the right tool to improve customer loyalty.

With the aid of geo-targeted push notifications, location-based brands can send specific to the target audience. Location-based call to action via region appears to be personalized to the user, grow target audience and drive more sales.

Increases Sales Ratio

Applications enhance customer experience by making the purchasing process convenient, intuitive and simpler, thereby increasing the sales ratio.

It is not necessary to offer purchases to boost sales, it can also do by offering loyalty programs and other additional services.

Opportunity for Social Marketing

Mobile connectivity has become crucial and synchronizing your app with social networks provides you an opportunity to disperse the content and go viral. Mobile apps enable users to share the brand’s content across various social channels.

Summing Up

Mobile App is considered as brand’s own marketing channel. It aids in establishing a direct marketing channel, thereby enabling marketers to reach a wider audience. If you are still not using a mobile application as a marketing channel for your brand, then you are lagging. It is the right time to explore new marketing opportunities and jump on the wagon with a mobile app for your brand.

Coronavirus outbreak has made governments across the world to shut down educational institutions to curb the spread. It’s more than a month and still, there are no chances of schools and universities opening soon. Schools and universities closure will not only have an impact on the learning of students but also give rise to far-reaching economic and societal consequences. 

The structure of schooling and learning, including teaching and assessment methodologies, was the first to be affected by these closures. The Coronavirus has transformed the centuries-old, chalk-talk teaching model to one driven by technology. 

Impact of Coronavirus on Online Education and Remote Learning

Coronavirus pandemic has made people around the globe turn to online education, hence opening doors of opportunities for EdTech companies. Over last month, online learning providers like Unacademy, upGrad and BYJU have experienced thousands of new registrations. Students all over the globe are looking for applications that can help them in the preparation of exams, sitting at home. 

Importance of E-Learning Applications

The relationship between student and teacher should be smooth for the learning to take place effectively. Both emotional and social development are necessary during this process, which leads to fruitful outcomes in the real world.

Through e-learning application, the learning process can be made interactive and critical problems can be solved easily.

Some existing popular Mobile applications are:

  • Amazon Kindle
  • PhotoMath
  • ABCmouse.com
  • Mathway
  • Epic
  • Unacademy
  • Udemy Online Courses
  • Lumosity

Read Also: Trending App Ideas for Startups

Key Benefits of E-learning Mobile Apps

The demand for e-learning mobile applications is mounting amid the Corona outbreak. Here are some of the major benefits of mobile learning solutions:

Learning Made Easy

The learning process has become simply by the use of mobile applications, in which lessons are conducted through interactive videos, animations, videos, tables and interactive displays. Education has been taken to the next level through digitization. These e-learning applications serve students with all the needed learning material at the same place. In the current situation, where people are not allowed to step out of their homes, the mobile application enables students to study at any time and place, based on their convenience.

Learning made Boundless

Complicated algorithms can be solved easily with the aid of mobile applications and real-time calculations can be performed without any hassle. Students can learn for as long as they want, depending on the time they have at their expanse. Applications provide students with a range of courses, which help them build a bright future with minimal efforts.

Reduced Cost of Learning

Educational applications have reduced the cost of learning by leaps and bound. E-learning applications allow students to avail of high-quality education at low costs from around the world, simply sitting at their homes. Moreover, instead of buying books, students can rely on the online study material available on smart devices with an active internet connection. 

Escalated Student Engagement

The education system in the 20th century was based on realistic education, social reconstruction and child-centered education. However, in the 21st century, this process has shifted towards the one which involves gaining personalized skills so that students can succeed in a challenging environment. With e-learning mobile application, students achieve greater engagement and better learning.

Technologies Involved in Building E-learning Mobile Application

Some of the common technologies involved in building e-learning mobile application are as follows:

Cloud Technologies

The Edtech companies around the world utilize cloud solution to host the data. This aids in enhancing operational efficiencies as well as achieving cost savings.

Blockchain Technology

A lot of information like student information, degree certificate and other relevant data can be stored effectively with the aid of Blockchain Technology. The technology provides increased security and reduces data damage considerably.

AR/VR Technology

In the recent scenario, more and more education app developers are integrating with mobile application with AR/VR solutions. AR/VR technology makes the learning process interesting, interactive and ubiquitous.

Augmented Reality aids students in better learning as it brings the digital aspects into the real world. More practical aspects and realistic approaches can be rendered by utilizing advanced AR/VR technologies.

Summing Up

E-learning is not an option anymore, the outbreak of Coronavirus has made it a necessity. Getting an e-learning application development at the present to ease remote learning for your students is a great opportunity. This will prevent you from losing the students, keep you ahead of your competitors and will also enable you to raise the education standard of your institute.

If you are also thinking to develop an application like Udemy and planning to hire a remote developer, then we can help you in this endeavor.

The global spread of the coronavirus has taken a major hit on the fashion industry and tumbled many stocks, however, one sector that is sustaining growth during the crisis is virtual health and wellness. Faced with quarantine and lockdowns, people are tapping telehealth and e-fitness platforms, causing their stocks to surge. There are several fitness apps available on the app store with millions of downloads. They owners have understand and worked on the crucial fitness app features before entering into development phase.

Amidst the uncertainty about when things would be back to normal, many fitness professionals are transitioning to a virtual workout program through free workout suggestions on social media and app. 

If you are also the one who is planning to take your fitness services online, then this is the perfect time to hit the market. Lets not directly jump to hire healthcare software developers, first understand about the types of fitness apps and all the functionalities that your business app must-have.

Different Types of fitness Apps

Different types of fitness apps

There are innumerable fitness apps on app stores, but all of them are not popular. If you want to create a fitness application, firstly learn about the application which customers love the most:

High-Intensity Interval Training:

HIIT are types of applications which offer customers with a short period of training that include lots of high intensive exercises. Such exercises require plenty of energy and burn plenty of calories in a short time. However, this isn’t safe with the audience who has just start doing a workout, so, keep this in mind while building your own fitness application. Some of the finest examples of HIIT applications are Interval Timer and Seconds Pro.

Activity Tracking App:

Activity tracking apps are the ones that cover one specific kind of activity or a lot of them. These types of applications cover a person’s movements, as well as the distance, traveled, calories burned, number of steps climbed and other such metrics.

While building an activity tracking app, it is important to keep in mind that these apps work better if they are compatible with wearable devices. Gadgets like Fitbit and smartwatch significantly extend the functionality of fitness applications.

Activity tracking applications generally integrate social share features. For example, Google FIT and Nike Training Club allow customers to share their progress with friends on the social network. Adding such a feature to your fitness application will make you provide training to the users along with their friends and other fitness enthusiasts.

Personal trainer or studio app:

Personal trainer apps are created for the personal needs of a trainer or studio and their clients. Such programs can have different types of functionalities. Some of Studio application works like an organizer, through which user organizes or cancels his training. They also have a newsfeed, where a trainer posts some updates.

When you are creating your fitness application, it is important to keep in mind that Live streaming is also one of the most crucial fitness apps features. A user arranges a session with a trainer and conduct training session anywhere. Using the live streaming feature, the trainer can explain to the user if he is doing the exercise correctly or not.

Fitness Builder and CardioTrainer are some of the popular personal trainer applications. 

Diet and Nutrition App:

Diet and Nutrition App apps help users keep track of the consumed calories. A user chooses a product he ate from the list, enter its weight and a precise number of calories pop on the screen. This helps people to keep a count on the number of calories they are having during the day. Some of these applications also have a barcode scanner to which enables them to purchase healthy products.

All these applications comprise features such as Calorie Counter, which you can find in My Fitness Pal app. It is one of the most downloaded diets and nutrition apps available on Google Play store. 

If you are also looking to develop a fitness application like My Fitness App, the professional developers at Graffersid can help.

Meditation App:

The yoga and meditation apps usually constitute a range of sessions that are classified according to the level of a user. A person can choose the level or program he or she wants to get. Such an app generally consists of daily sessions, which means these apps have a high retention rate. Many of the meditation and yoga app has a reminder option to inform a user at a specific time. 

Some of the best examples of Yoga applications are Alo Moves and Down Dog.

To satisfy the needs of modern-day customers, the majority of popular fitness applications are trying to combine several features into one. For instance, HIIT and activity tracker applications these days can also have a calories calculator or yoga app that can have a daily step counter.

here are Mobile App Development Ideas for Startups to Thrive Amid COVID

Here are Basic Features a Fitness App must-have

Here are Basic Features a Fitness App must-have

Log-in

Having a feature to create a personal account is basic and must-have. Various applications either suggest logging in through applications like Google+, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook or signing up via email. It is better to provide your users with both options. 

Social Integration

Through Social Integration, the information stored on a social network will be synchronized with the fitness app. In addition to this, authorizing an application via Facebook makes the search for friends easier; hence it is better to combine some functions of a social network with your application. Many apps allow users to publish the results on Facebook along with the screenshots of targets they have achieved during the workout.

Personal Account

Several types of data should be added manually by the user according to their body type and rest can be configured in settings. Suggest users add a profile picture by either taking a new photo or downloading it from a library. Don’t forget to make users choose between kilograms and pounds, when it comes to weight and between feet and meters when it comes to height. Try to be international.

Device Connectivity

With the emerging trend of fit bands, it is good to have a mobile application that is compatible with as many trackers as possible. Fortunately, fitness band producers and mobile platforms, offer fitness app developers with such a chance.

User activity tracking

Traditional fitness applications are generally focused on activities like running, cycling, walking and more. The application shows a number of steps made, miles run, time taken and calories burned. It is better to integrate both, tracking with the help of Fitbit and using smartphone sensors.

Geolocation

With this feature of fitness app users can, track the current position, build walking routes, track the current position and record workouts. To learn more about how this feature works in Fitness app, go through the recorded routes on Strava.

Target Setting

It is one of the must-have features that every activity tracking application should have. Let users plan and set achievable. They should constantly move forward towards their goal.

Workouts

Workout may differ depending on the type of application. Most of the tracking apps come with a feature to allow you to create a custom workout plan or choose from the offered ones. 

Notifications

Workout and exercises are all about regularity. A few missed workout sessions and you will lose all your shape. That’s why reminders are a crucial feature of fitness or yoga app. Although they should not be annoying. Time and frequency are the main variables. In case the user is ill or busy, he should be capable of adjusting them.

While working on the idea of a fitness application, don’t forget that the key to the success of healthcare app development is user engagement. And, visualization plays an important role in this process. Hence, you need to provide the user with detailed reports and analytics.

Must Read: How to Create a Fitness App that Thrives in the Market

Started since late December, Novel Coronavirus is still breaking the headlines, with the number of infected people exponentially rising all over the world. The virus has majorly disrupted the global economies, affected worldwide travel leading to flight cancellations, quarantines, lockdown and other movement restrictions. In just a short period, the virus which causes the disease known as COVID-19 has spread to every continent of the world except Antarctica.

Amidst the breakdown of pandemic and surrounding economic implications, there also exist industries that are experiencing unprecedented growth. The time is tough; however, you can still thrive if you set your foot in the right direction.

Here are some of the industries that are witnessing promising opportunities amid Corona

1. Health and Wellness Industry

There are obvious reasons behind the growth of the medical and healthcare industry as the number of Corona cases are surging at a rapid rate. Governments of every country are working to strengthen the healthcare system so that they are no short of facilities to treat Corona patients.

In the face of a pandemic, immunity is one of the biggest weapons. And, amid the clear directives from government authorities to steer clear of crowded places, home-based workout programs, and fitness equipment industry is sure to boom. A China-based based fitness app that offers a workout program ranging from yoga to skipping, saw a boost in the ranking from 260th in mid-January to 79th in early February on the Apple App Store. In addition to this, live broadcast of fitness, yoga and meditation classes is surging at a great rate. Sales of indoor fitness equipment such as skipping ropes and dumbbells have also seen a boost.

This a great time to take your fitness services online and make sure that you remain connected with clients even in the quarantine period.

2. Videoconferencing Apps

From big names like Twitter and Amazon to medium-scaled business and startups, every company associated in IT industry is transiting to remote working to continue operation, along with preventing the spread of the virus. And, to make sure they are obtaining the same productivity as they used to get in an office setting, companies are looking for more applications like Zoom and Trello for effortless video conferencing and project management.

Image Credit: App Annie

Remote working is not a new thing; more and more companies in the USA are adopting this new work style which helps in work-life and balance. Work from home and remote working is sure to exist long after the Corona will be over. Thereby opening a lot of opportunities for Zoom, Slack and Jira-like business ventures.

If you are looking for a startup idea, then building a tool to help in the management of a remote team in Corona-times is the best bet. For developing tool, you can Hire Dedicated Project Management Tool Developers

Read More: What Made Zoom Dominate the Video-Conferencing Market Despite its Shortcomings?

3. Online Education and Remote Learning

During this outbreak, people around the globe are turning to online education, opening doors of opportunities for EdTech companies as traditional learning/training institutions are trying to adopt the transition to remote teaching. The online education sector in China has witnessed a boom as schools are suspended all over the country.

Over last month, online learning providers like BYJU‘s, upGrad and Unacademy have experienced thousands of new registrations. Students all over the globe are looking for applications that can help in the preparation of competitive exams, sitting at home. If you are also the one who is facing financial challenges due to the shut down of learning/training institution as of Corona outbreak, then instead of cursing the fortune, consider going online through one such application.

Image Credit: Nocamels

Education companies, apart from launching e-learning courses, are hiring Ed-Tech software developers for developing data tools to analyze the performance of students and teachers. The virus continues to spread in several countries, however, schools and universities can remain in operation by building an e-learning system for the students.

4. Entertainment

Gaming Apps

The mobile gaming industry all over the world has experienced an explosion in terms of downloads. China recorded 222 million downloads of gaming applications as well as non-gaming applications like online music streaming and hobby learning apps since February 2. If this is the stats from one country, imagine the number of downloads around the globe.

Popular games like “Honor of Kings”, “PUBG” and “League of Legends” have become twice as popular as they were during 2019, according to the streaming index by Douyu. Coming non-gaming entertainment apps, the online music streaming apps like Spotify, Deezer, Tidal are receiving the highest number of subscribers in the quarantine period.

Non-Gaming Apps

Talking about video streaming apps, although the company is not releasing numbers, however, according to Netflix’s chief content officer, has seen a surge in the stream. Amazon’s Twitch has experienced a 31% growth in viewership over the last month, with a total amount of hours jumped from 33 million on March 8th to 43 million on March 22nd.

5. Grocery Delivery Applications

With millions of people around the world in quarantine and lockdown, there are growing opportunities for food delivery companies. Mobile ordering applications like Zomato, Swiggy, Instacart have experienced a significant decline. However, grocery delivery and recipe applications outperformed after the government in various countries told people to stay indoors. For instance, Alibaba’s grocery delivery app “Fresh Hema” reached nearly 1000,000 downloads in a single day after lockdown, compared to an average of 29,000 per day during 2019.

Image Credit: Nocamels

To prevent getting the infection, people are looking for a contactless delivery service. Grocery and medicine delivery applications, following the norms of “non-contact delivery”, are sure to get hefty downloads long after Corona.

Read More: How much Does it Cost to Develop Grocery Delivery App like Instacart?

6. Artificial Intelligence

Since the outbreak of the virus, almost 2,000 research papers have been published on the health effects, possible treatments, and dynamics of the resulting pandemic. Researchers believe that artificial intelligence can help to study the behavior of the virus.

White House has recently announced a project in collaboration with academics and tech companies to make a huge amount of coronavirus research accessible to AI researches. Professionals involved in AI research are asked to mine the avalanche of research to get the answer to questions that could medical health experts. AI algorithms are being sought to discover possible treatments that make the virus worse for some patients.

7. Robotics

The shortage of workers and restrictions on human contact to curb the spread of Coronavirus is increasing the demand for service robots in China. Hence, the sector that has struggled so long to scale up commercially is finally boosting.

Venture capitalists with expertise in the robotics sector said they anticipating orders from countries like the USA and China to rise significantly this year. From restaurants and hotels to hospitals and factory floors, service robots will be soon everywhere.

Earlier, robots were only seen in manufacturing plants. However, after Coronavirus hit the world, many companies donated disinfectant and food delivery robots to the hospital. Thus, preventing virus transmission and managing supplies.

Read More: Mobile App Development Ideas for Startups to Thrive Amid COVID

Parting Ways

Now, more than ever, companies must understand the environment we are living in and try adapting to it. Ventures that will reconstruct the business model according to the present situation of quarantine and lockdown will not only survive the pandemic, but will get ahead of their competition.

This month has been a heck of a year. The outbreak of Coronavirus has thrust most of the world into a state of panic and most employees (not just the ones working in IT firms) are adopting this new model of working remotely. The companies are using best tools to manage remote team.

For many freelancers and consultants, this is something they have been doing for years, whether it is working from the room, café or plane. However, with schools closed nearly everywhere, working remotely is now managing the children and families in addition to the work.

With so many folks working remotely, it becomes essential for the companies to equip themselves with team management tools to keep track on the completion of the task. While working with a remote team, you need tools for uninterrupted communication and the right tool to conduct the meeting.

In this article, we are bringing The Best Five Tools to Manage Remote Team:

Scoro:

Scoro is a popular work management software that combines tools that help you manage sales, billing, projects and even allow employee collaboration. Scoro lets you manage your remote team and also lets you run an entire business from home or wherever you are.

The tool helps you manage not only the remote team but the entire company, simply sipping coffee at the comfort of your couch. Moreover, the reporting capabilities of Scoro are unparalleled to other remote employee management software available in the market.

Key features of Scoro:

  1. Scoro provides an instant overview of the team’s work. Team dashboards include charts, metrics and to-do lists enable you to effortlessly track work progress.
  2. Time tracking is made easy with Scoro. It let your team track both the actual and billable spent time on a project-timesheets created in just a quick span of time.
  3. The tool offers real-time reporting and gives you a compact overview of time spent or planned broken down by project, team member or client.

Pricing:

Scoro self-boarding starts from $0 and the standard package starts from $899 and pro starts from $1,699.

Read Also: 7 Best Tools to Conduct Meeting with Remote Teams in Corona-Times

Pivotal Tracker:

With a shared view of team priorities, dynamic tools to analyze progress and process that fosters collaboration, your team will deliver more consistently and frequently.

Key Features of Pivotal Tracker: 

  1. It lets you configure notifications to get the messages and updates you need.
  2. It offers file sharing options; you can enhance your stories, mock-ups, presentations, drag-and-drop from your computer or attach them from Google Drive.
  3. Organize and monitor stories with searchable labels to make your workflow more visible.
  4. The story blockers help make project impediments highly visible so that your team can collaborate to resolve them.
  5. Follow the breadcrumb trail, view every update of the project from day one to see how the changes in code are mapped into product decisions.

Pricing

Pivotal Tracker is totally free for team up to 3 and the team of all sizes can get Tracker free for a month period. The Startup package of the tool starts from $12.50/month for 5 collaborators and 5 private projects and Pro package starts from $62.50/month for 15 collaborators.

Freshdesk:

One of the biggest benefits of working with a remote team is the fabled “24-hour coverage.” Freshdesk is cloud-based customer support software that allows you to enjoy 24-hour connectivity with your employees.

The software allows you to streamline all your customer conversations in one place, collaborate with other teams to resolve the issue faster and automate your repetitive work.

Key Features of Freshdesk: 

  1. It lets you track and manage incoming support tickets that are coming from multiple channels within one inbox.
  2. Offers SLA management, which means you can set deadlines for ticket response and resolution based on different business categories.
  3. You can provide quick and consistent responses to common questions by creating pre-formatted replies.
  4. Agent Collision Detection, which ensures that multiple agents don’t end up working on the same ticket by mistake.

Read Also: How to Make a Smooth Transition to Remote Development Team

Quip:

Quip is a real-time document sharing and editing platform that let your team work on and share public documents. It also comes with a helpful notification tool, Quip automatically pings the one mentioned in the document. Conversations are displayed alongside, which makes it easy to understand the task.

Key Features of Quip: 

  • Account Planning: Quip allows you to turn static plans into dynamic data-driven strategies that increase pipeline, drive action and get the whole team to align in real-time.
  • Close Plans: With Quip’s Close Plans you can manage deal more efficiently that save time and speed up deals with live data.
  • Deal Feeds: The tool allows you to boost the visibility of your business and motivates your team to achieve more. It provides real-time notification on which deals are pushing, which deals are closing and more.
  • Opportunity Notes: The tool captures customer notes and syncs them with the right opportunity across any device. This increases alignment and gets deals faster inside your CRM.

Pricing:

The Starter package of the tool is available at $10/user/month billed annually, while the Enterprise package of the tool is available at $25/user/month.

GitHub Wiki:

GitHub Wiki is a place in your repository where you can share long-form content such as how it’s been designed, how to use it and so on. It is a helpful resource for new employee onboarding.

Key Features of GitHub Wiki: 

  1. Wiki is hosting documentation that you will find every GitHub repository. You can use your repository’s wiki to share necessary and detailed content about it such as how to use it, how to design it and its core principles.
  2. A README available in GitHub wiki quickly let the user the name what your project can do, while you can use the wiki to provide additional documentation.
  3. With Wikis, you can write content just like everywhere else on GitHub. We use open-source Markup Library so that different formats can be easily converted into HTML.
  4. Wikis are available to the public in public repositories and limited to people with access to the repository.

Pricing:

GitHub basics is free for every developer. Github’s Pro starts from $7/month and the Team package are available at $9 per user/month.

Conclusion

If you are a remote team manager, look no further when it comes to effectively manage the distributed and remote team. The above mentioned five tools are effective tools to manage remote team, aid you in leading a productive virtual team effectively amid Corona.

The news about novel coronavirus (COVID-19) continues to dominate the headlines even after the three months of the outbreak of the virus and raise public concern. Millions of people around the globe are affected by the pandemic and daily thousands are getting infected. To prevent virus spread, companies and educational institutions around the globe have resorted to remote working. How you and your development team are coping with the situation?

Big tech companies are implementing remote work protocols as the cases of COVID-19 cases continue to escalate. However, to make sure that you are still obtaining the same productivity from your team, you need to equip your team with the right tools to make their job easier.

Graffersid team also researched for the best tools and found these tools. Then, we thought of sharing because if we have struggled to find the best, other entrepreneurs might also be. So, here are five best design and development tools that your remotely working developers must possess:

Browsersync:

When it comes to building a website, you have likely found shortcuts and other methods, which can save your time and cut out many of the tedious tasks. But what about the testing phase? With visitors accessing your website through different browsers, screen sizes and devices, how you can efficiently test your website with so many variables?

Browsersync offers a handy solution for this. This Node.js dependent tool simplifies how your site looks and performs on major devices, rather than relying on inefficient testing methods.

Here is what you can do with Browsersync:

  • Integrate with a task runner like Grunt or Gulp.
  • It let you test your website during a hypothetical network throttle.
  • Test your website across all devices and browsers simultaneously. Any action you take on one device will be mirrored across all the others.
  • Sync updates to all browsers without hitting the Refresh button

InVision Studio:

The InVision App is one of those tools, which offers a fantastic boon for productivity, but only to a certain extent. InVision is the best for agencies that are looking for a collaboration tool to successfully complete the project on time.

InVision Studio combines Photoshop and Sketch with the InVision App to offer web designers with the total package. For those who find Adobe design apps too cumbersome and Sketch to simplistic to use, InVision Studio is the perfect solution to find one solution for the full web design lifecycle.

Here are some of the cool features of InVision Studio:

  • The interface is familiar and intuitive one.
  • Screen transitions can be as rich and complex as you need them.
  • Unlike other design software, in InVision Studio you need to create artboards only once and not for each device
  • Design assets, color palettes and branding can be bundled into libraries to ensure consistency.
  • InVision App’s collaboration tool is fully integrated.

Read More: 7 Best Tools to Conduct Meeting with Remote Teams in Corona-Times

PandaDoc:

PandaDoc might not necessarily help you develop or design websites any quicker, it will help new project proposals, get more clients on board and keep projects instantly through the pipeline.

It is simply a matter of how to use this tool to create documentation of your project that streamlines the paperwork part of your business.

Here are some of the features of PandaDoc:

  • Create templates from scratch.
  • Use the pre-made templates (including non-closure disagreements, quotes and project kickoffs) and modify as you like.
  • Save those templates in your library to repurpose for all your projects.
  • Use a drag and drop builder to design your documents any way you choose.
  • Brand your documentation.

Loom:

A loom is a screencasting tool that lets you record your screen and share it with other team members. Sometimes the easiest way to talk to the team about web development is with a visual demonstration.

What are screencasts?

Screencasts look like screenshots, but they are in video forms. They are perfect to explain your remote team about the new tasks and assignments. Instead of dictating instructions, you can send video to your team members, showing them how to use a particular function.

Loom offers audio, video, face recording, and universal compatibility. Loom can take screencasts as well as record your voice and display your face. This enables you to explain the projects clearly to your team, without setting up a video conference.

Loom is available as an app for Windows, iOS and Mac. It also has a Chrome extension that works within a browser for Android devices. This lets your entire access the tool, despite of the system you are using.

You can use the professional-looking video by Loom for:

  • WordPress training
  • An introduction to your agency and services.
  • Tutorial to new employees about certain tasks
  • Video content to share your marketing strategy
  • Developing courses and other training material that can be used to generate revenue on your site.

Pattern Lab:

Pattern Lab has been around for a long time, but it is with the most recent of Pattern Lab 2 that is being adopted by designers and developers. Pattern Lab divides the UI design process into the smallest elements known as atoms. Pattern Lab also makes these elements much simpler. Rather than updating the element in every instance of design, you only need to update it once you have applied it universally.

Here are a few other benefits of using Pattern Lab:

  • It is also called tool agnostic, which means you can use HTML, CSS or Javascript platform, framework, extension, library within this.
  • It is easy to create patterns with Pattern Lab and share it with your team to ensure consistent application across your project.
  • It is responsive so you don’t worry about building patterns for different devices.

Summary

In today’s time, it is crucial for agencies to work smarter and faster. The same goes for remote workers and teams working from home. There are faster/better/stronger and more efficient web design and development tools that get released each year. While you might not have the time to hunt around for them, you have guide blogs like this to point you in the right direction.

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