Outsourcing | Is it the easy way ?

From my experience in building of Let's Volunteer, Josh Cars, e-Grameen, Pipemonk and a few other projects (or products), we did a few things in-house and a few outsourced.

I would like to share the learning on Outsourcing through this article and answer a few quick questions that arises for young entrepreneurs in the first few weeks of starting up.

I assume that more than 50% of the startups today in India are internet based, technology or computer software startups. I would like to group them all as computer startups. And we do see that there are a good number of computer startups started by non-techie guys, and the big question for all of them in the beginning is to outsource or build it in-house.

For example, Abhinay Choudari, from my understanding must have not had a good in-depth knowledge on writing code to develop a website.

Going back, to the big question on to build a software (or a website) in-house or outsource leads us to three quick questions as below.

1. Are there any readily available tools and software we can rely on ?
2. If we build internally, how to recruit the best tech folks ?
3. If we outsource, how do we manage the process and how can we trust ?

To answer the first question, I would like to a give a few examples, of the leading tools (I have used in the past) available for free of cost majority of the times, and we can find more & more on product hunt if you follow it regularly.

Now, suppose, you concluded that, none of these work for you and you got to build the software product or website on your own, then, we are left out with the questions 2 and 3. And before we answer these two questions, lets look at a few leading examples as below.

Swiggy, will not outsource its delivery fleet to a different company, as it is it's (having in-house delivery fleet) core differentiation among the food tech startups in India today.

Urbanclap, will not outsource its app development, as it's match-making engine is the key differentiation among its competition.

So as a thumb rule, I would suggest, never to outsource a product or a feature that's your core differentiation.

While, we still have big banking organizations, outsource its website development to technology companies, huge solar energy firms, outsourcing its finance management software to other companies.

Now suppose, you have decided to build it in-house, the next important step is to build the right technical team. Hiring technical team members in a startup is as vital as forming a founding team. The best ways to hire your technical team, is to hire a couple of folks from your own college, where you passed out from.

Why So? That's because, One, you know the talent that is available in your college. Two, your faculty can help you the best in hiring the best talent from your college.

And after everything, suppose, you have taken a call to outsource,

1. Always, own the product management with you (the founder, the ideator)
2. Spend good amount of time to decide on whom to hand-over the project to,

• Always note to consider the soft skills also besides just the technical skills. From my experience, when many a times, it was hard for the developers in understanding what you exactly want. Be it the problem of language or be it the experience.
• Please screen through multiple projects under their portfolio and understand on what all did they develop as part of the project.
• Design is also very important, and understand if they are highly experienced with designing (UI and UX).

Now, the question on where to outsource from or where to find these developers ?

• Sincere advise is to, outsource to a company or a group of people, who are located in the same city you are based out of. This helps you to meet them quite often when in any small doubt, to clarify the best face-to-face.
• Budget for a web-development from my experience ranges from 1000 to 5000 INR. (estimating of time is very important in this case).
• Upwork, Freelancer and a huge list of facebook groups are the best places to find the resources.

Behance is my favorite place to find the best designers

Also try using one of the project management tools like,

• Asana
• Trello
• Basecamp

And any one of the messaging tool between the team members like,

• Slack
• Skype
• Google Hangouts

To conclude, what I know is very little, and when you start doing it yourself, in the process, you will come across more & more tools and ways to build your product.

All the best!

P.S. Outsourcing is not just limited to technology. It can be to logo designing, web designing, hiring etc.