Outsourcing: Million-Dollar Freelancer Sanjay Dange, Co-Founder and COO of Smartinfosys.net (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: So, your project teams directly work with the customers and keep them updated?

Sanjay Dange: No, they never directly work with the customers. They are always accessible on our online project management system. Only the team coordinators directly interact with customers. Usually feedback is  posted on our project management system which triggers an automated email to the customer. The customer in turn can post a response.

SM: I see. Is this project management system something you developed on your own?

SD: Yes, we have developed it in-house. We have developed a comprehensive ERP system in house that takes care of all the operations in our company.

SM: Because you do so much design-oriented work, what process do you follow to transmit the screenshots and the look and feel of the designs?

SD: We follow a systematic design process. Every design project is divided into small tasks with set targets.  Usually, a custom web page design takes two to three days  The process begins with preparing a hand drawn sketch by our fine arts people in active consultation with designing head. We study product nature, industry nature and underlying the message behind a webpage, We have a team of more than 25   graphic and CSS designers divided into small teams of four to five people. Every team is headed by team coordiantor who directly reports to designing head.  Sketches are given to the graphic designers who prepare a few design variations for every web page or logo or any other graphic material. The layouts are presented to the clients and after few rounds of revisions, the layouts are finalized.

SM: Okay. I think you’ve got a very nice, winning formula. What are your plans? How do you grow from five crores, which is more than $1 million? How do you plan to go from here to the next level of growth?

SD: We have a few plans for 2012. We are coming up with an e-commerce site highlighting our custom services and products.  Our e-commerce website is in an advanced stage of development, and we plan to launch it before Christmas. The upcoming e-commerce corporate portal will market a wide range of web services which include domain registration, web hosting services, web templates, graphic services and programming modules for various PHP open source frameworks. We have a huge library available for modules that  we have developed over the years. We will sell them on our e-commerce portal.

SM: In terms of these products, you’re going to be using these products to build customer sites. You’re not going to be selling them as modules outside of your services, right?

SD: No, we are going to sell these custom modules on our e-commerce portal. These custom modules do form the part of our various sites, and they will be used continuously. We are also planning to sell templates on our ecommerce website.

SM: Those markets are extremely crowded. The e-commerce building-block market is extremely crowded.

SD: Yes, I understand; however, we would like to associate our customized services with templates we plan to sell. Custom services are our strength, and we would like to offer a blend of ready-made templates and custom services.

SM: If I were in your place, I would just have these building blocks and sell them as part of the service. Your services are going to be at a much higher margin, because you will have these pre-built modules you can use to deliver your products. That’s the way I would bring those products to market.

SD: Your view is highly appreciated. In  the last 10 years, we have done more than 250 custom programming modules. Our research team continuously works on new modules, which are further used in delivering custom solutions to our clients. We are now planning to give them a shape and sell them.

SM: Yes, but what I’m saying is that market you’re trying to get into – as you will find out – is an extremely crowded market, and it’s not going to be easy to get into.

SD: You are very right.

SM: If I were in your place, I would be conservative about investing a lot of money in trying to get into that market.

SD: Definitely. Your advice is appreciated, and your point is taken. As far as templates are concerned, that is going constitute a very small portion of our business. Our emphasis will be on graphic services, custom design development, programming modules marketing and custom programming. We have established a strong brand name in PHP programming and have undertaken hundreds of projects in PHP language. Website designing and PHP programming are our strength and we would like to leverage them to deliver custom solutions and products. This is quite a logical extension to our services which I foresee for 2012.

SM: Very good. I like your story. It’s very interesting. Thank you for sharing it.

SD: Thank you.

This segment is part 5 in the series : Outsourcing: Million-Dollar Freelancer Sanjay Dange, Co-Founder and COO of Smartinfosys.net
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