Interview with Devanarayanan Gopakumaran Nair, Founder & CEO - AlignMinds Technologies


Devanarayanan Gopakumaran Nair Interview on TopDevelopers.co

Devanarayanan Gopakumaran Nair  linkedin

Founder & CEO, AlignMinds Technologies
Give us a quick overview on AlignMinds. When and how did you begin this journey and what were your motives to be successful in app development?

The journey of AlignMinds started in the spring of 2009 and it is gratifying to see that we managed to complete ten successful years. We had a very humble beginning, as a technology startup with a handful of members ten years ago.  It was just the very beginning of the whole mobile app ecosystem and we knew well that we were being part of an industry that will grow exponentially in the next decade and there will be a growing need for technology consulting partners when companies will start embracing mobility. .So, we decided early on to position ourselves as a reliable consulting company that specializes in mobility and cloud, and we are proud to see that we have evolved to become a very reliable and trusted technology partner for more than a hundred companies,  in different parts of the world, within a decade.


What is your role in the management and development of AlignMinds?

I build relationships and offer thought leadership at AlignMinds. Internally, I invite people to think creatively and solve problems on their own. When in doubt, I help people to understand our unwritten constitution which is based on our founding principles and values, that decides to how we shall address concerns of our stakeholders – team, clients, our families, partners etc.


Tell us about your biggest achievement in the industry

I believe it’s not the size or the revenue, but the value you have created for each of your clients is your biggest achievement. Some of the startups that we have worked with have grown to become very large companies. Also, being a company that breathes innovation, we have introduced to digital innovation to several enterprises that helped them come out of their technology hibernation and be agile and alive in today’s growing and dynamic market conditions. For Example, we built the world’s first mobile based anti-corruption platform, ‘Whistle Now’ for the Govt. of Kerala. We also helped the Postal Corporation, Kenya to build a cutting edge mobile delivery platform, EMS2GO, which transformed their business model.


How do you schedule the development phases of the apps to promise the timeline to your clients?

The development schedules are dependent on the project scope. Once the project scope is completely known, we estimate the time based on our empirical knowledge and also, our experience in the chosen technology stack. We conduct exhaustive discussions with the client after the initial estimate to find out the timeline requirements and arrive at a mutually agreed schedule. Number of resources, prioritization of features, incremental deliveries – these are all factors which influence the schedule and we make sure that we carefully consider each to meet the customer expectations.


How do you help your clients in choosing the right yet profitable platform for app development?

The choice of platform is highly dependent on the user segment and the geography for which the app is built.  While Android devices have the greatest global market share, Apple dominates the App Store for customer spending.  So, this is not an easy decision to make. We help the customer to analyze the major factors that influence this choice. The most critical factors will be audience, timeline, desired features, the budget you are willing to spend for app maintenance and finally, the client’s revenue goal.


Which would you suggest for a successful and profitable business progression, Native or hybrid apps? How do you define the factors that influenced you to make this choice?

This is one of the classical questions I think every app developer faces. And again, this is a decision to be made based on a few considerations. Undoubtedly, from our long years in app development, native apps have better performance with rendering and animations than hybrid apps. However, hybrid apps or cross platform apps win when it comes to cost savings and faster development cycles. So, if cost is a major constraint, we will recommend hybrid apps and you will have faster time to market, one source code, easy updates, availability of resources, and lower budget costs. However, in the long run, you may end up spending more money for maintenance, like fixing and tweaking the app because of non-functional UI elements or performance driven issues.

Hence, if you can afford a good initial investment, native development is the way to go. Native apps offer best in class security, better performance and high UI responsiveness. Moreover, it will have access to all native APIs.


How do you scheme your pricing model? How do you fix your budget?

Our pricing model is based on the expert resource time we are required to invest for the successful completion of a project. Every project that we undertake goes through different stages such as Discovery/pre-research stage, Design stage, Development stage, Testing and deployment stage and Support & maintenance. In each of these stages, AlignMinds will deploy experienced resources with the skills needed for that stage. Hence, our pricing model is based on determining the project scope and identifying the resource time required in each stage to complete the scope.
We offer flexible engagement models to suit our client’s nature of operations and expectations. This ranges from dedicated product engineering teams to fixed bid and time and material models.


How helpful are the mobile apps developed by your team, for enhancing your clients’ business?

Today, there is an overwhelming volume of apps in the market and businesses develop apps for various reasons. However, from the experience of building hundreds of apps for our customers, we help our clients to focus on,

Providing more value to their customers
Building a stronger brand
Connecting Better with their audience
Boosting profits

It’s very simple. When you help your clients grow, you will grow as well. This is what I believe in and it has always worked.


What according to you are the best practices to attain client satisfaction?

Our job as a technology consulting company is to transform our customers vision into a technical reality. To ensure absolute customer delight, I consider the following as practices that you can do without-

Thorough research - client’s business, products, services, operations and competition.
Proper planning - time, resources, and costs.
Making the right technology decisions - platform, development stack, architecture
Transparent Communication
Adherence to a quality standard that exceeds customer expectations


How do you update your business system to be in pace with the technological advancements?

In today's incredibly fast paced markets it is true that our skill levels are becoming constantly challenged. So, your chances of survival and success are entirely dependent on the company's ability to adapt and embrace change. AlignMinds is a company strongly rooted in Agile principles like situational leadership, participative management, self-organizing teams etc. So, openness to change is deeply embedded in our DNA and work culture.

Our organizational transformation initiatives are based on three key principles:

Build a culture of innovation
Continuous Research and Development
Consistent Training Programmes

To build the culture of innovation, we regularly conduct internal hackathons for teams. In fact, our team won two international hackathons back to back, conducted by DBS bank, Singapore. We have Technology Experts Group (TEG) that spearhead the research and training activities focused on re-skilling teams.


What are your thoughts about AR, VR and Internet of Things (IoT)?

I believe the future of AI, IoT and VR/AR is coming faster than ever. Soon, to remain relevant, technology companies will be forced to integrate AI into every aspect of their solutions and platforms. We have already started integrating AI libraries to the apps we build, and I think there is a growing need in the market to explore the possibilities and take advantages of artificial intelligence in digital solutions that are currently being built by companies like us.

As far as VR is concerned, right now the technology is all about vision and sound. I think the next thing would be 'touch'. I recently read about startup that makes gloves which enable users to virtually pick up and feel objects

By 2025, it is estimated that there will be more than to 21 billion IoT devices. Hospitality, healthcare and automobile sectors are going to increasingly employ IoT to optimize their operations. We are going to see an increasing number of smart restaurants, smart hospitals and smart cars within the next couple of years. Interestingly, the AI middleware called CloudPlex that we built for production houses use IoT extensively for making smart decisions, specifically in restaurants and assembly lines.


What do you think will be the future of Mobile technology?

While the most popular user application touch point is still the web browser, mobile apps will surpass it within a year. I think the immediate future of mobility is multi experience application development, which means developing conversational user interfaces, image and voice recognition with the help of AI. We are going to see apps with unprecedented choices for interactions being presented to the user. And these modes of interaction (type, touch, gestures, natural language) will expand across the digital user journey.

So, the world is getting more and more connected with intelligence embedding. As a growing technology company, our role is to help people with the means to interact with this spectacular digital universe unfolding before our eyes and the interactions that will make life more meaningful and wholesome.

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