"The Indian Way"
entrepreneurship blog – Post 7

·         The purpose of this post is not to offend any nation or other group, just to show the reality as we experienced it. 

India is a favorite destination for Israeli travelers who want to shed some of the burdens of our noisy, crowded lives.  For the past few decades India has been the place to realize fantasies of a tropical paradise on the Goan beaches, enormous deserts in Rajistan, the Himalayan mountain ranges, bustling cities and lots of far eastern charm.
Over the last decade India has also started to attract the complete opposite of laid back tourists.  High tech companies have located many of their product development processes in India.  The temptations of outsourcing include low prices, and skilled and fast personnel who can easily compete with any alternatives available in the West.
Does it sound like a dream?  Yes it can be a dream, but sometimes it can become a nightmare, and a very expensive one.
With our Internet venture Wibizz, after defining the idea, we faced a number of possibilities for developing it:
-  Bring in a technological partner/ programming entity to develop the system.
-  Relatively low cost local development of a minimal website (demo) to show investors.
-  the “Indian way”:  manage site development with a team in India and get a bargain price product.
The third option was attractive to us because at that time our budget was very limited.
Our team consisted of a local development manager whose task was to manage the Indian workers from Israel.  At the time it seemed a cheap and effective option, because the development manager already had good experience of working with teams in India.  We relied on his experience and proceeded with the plan.
Our development manager made contact with an Indian company through a site that sets up deals between programmers and clients.  We examined the various companies proposed, and we chose one whose project portfolio looked satisfactory.  The arrangement was set up, and tasks and timetables were defined.
The story is interesting because both founder of Wibizz had experience India on the ground a few years earlier as tourists.  They had been exposed to a mentality that is very different from the Israeli one:  laid back, full of vagueness that often looks to western eyes like apathy.  We were very surprised to learn that this approach could find its way into professional areas such as high tech.
After agreeing on milestones and payments for them, we waited a week for the site management system.  The feedback we got was fine, so of course we were not worried.  But the atmosphere of trust soon changed.  There were lots of phone calls to find out what was happening, sometimes with no response, sometimes with quite creative responses – the main programmer was sick, and so on.  After a whole chain of overruns and deviations from schedule, delays and threats on our part to withhold payment, we finally got the site content management system and found out the site had been built the wrong way round!
Usually a project starts with general instructions until gradually the parties become more professional and find a common language to improve the work.  We wanted to believe that this would happen in this case, so we continued with a lot of good will, but we quickly found out we were wrong.  There were more delays, lots of original excuses, lots of disappointment, as our development team manager (and in fact all of us) lost complete control of the whole process.  After a great deal of arguing and threats, we eventually received the basic program code for the site.   We were happy that the site seemed basically operational and we started looking at the code itself.  We soon found out that the quality of the code was far from satisfactory.
We picked up the pieces and pressed on – or rather, we went back almost to the beginning!
Our bad experience doesn’t prove that all development in India is wrong or too complex.  We reached the understanding that a project of this type must be approached carefully:

·         The product must be accurately specified in detail at levels that we were not used to.  It is absolutely fatal to rely on the improvisational skills of these groups.

·         The team must include an Israel development manager with experience of managing operations with Indian programmers, including successful experience of handling crises.

·         Clear, detailed and practical objectives and timetables must be defined in writing.  Bonuses can be used as incentives, but in fact just meeting basic objectives is a desirable target.

·         Selecting a programming company with proven practical experience working with companies in your own country and of similar size to yours is essential.    You should never rely on ratings on the broker’s site (however good it is), but only on actual people that you trust and who themselves have worked on more than one project with an Indian development team.

·         It is preferable for the management team to operate in India, because good communications are essential and can save a lot of time and energy.  Someone must be able to have face to fact discussions with the Indian programmers.

·         The deal must be physically sealed and signed with the Indian development team manager, specifying all components of the system required, with specific timetables.

·         Payment must be conditional on milestones, with penalties for any delays.  These penalties must be specified in detail, including reductions in the payments for deviation from various predefined parameters such as quality.

·         If you hear the words, “No problem” you can assume it’s a big problem and it will only get worse (unfortunately, this is true for Israel as well).

·         Finally, and most important, remember that if sufficient funds are available, it’s usually better to go for local development, for reasons of quality and control.
In the end, we started development from scratch in Israel, after preparing a detailed specification of the system.  We learnt our lesson well, and although it left us with rather a bitter taste, at least we were strong enough to get back on our feet and move forward.

And at the very least, it left us with a nice story to tell our grandchildren…