If you are a startup and have decided to outsource to India, start updating yourself about how things work there. 10 Tips for startups that outsource to India

1. Startup Outsourcing
From the Indian trenches!

2. Not every city in India is a startup hub!
Bangalore, Chennai, Pune, Mumbai, Delhi, Noida,
Gurgaon, Hyderabad are the usual suspects.
Lesser known cities have good teams too. But they are
least exposed to startups. 90% of all Indian dev shops
don’t hangout with local startups!

3. Water still falls!
Most dev shops still think ‘waterfall’ model. Agile is
practiced in few startups at varying vigor.

4. Scale-Quality combination is elusive!
Good dev shops are sacrificing scale for quality and
building products instead. Scaled out dev shops vary
in quality often across teams within the company.

5. The shadow of Big $B Indian IT firms !
Entrepreneurs from big Indian IT firms setting up small
dev shops are different from those with startup/small
company stints. The dev shops run by the former
resemble smaller versions of big IT firms
(Scale over Quality, Spread of services than deep skills in a niche, spec-driven than
iterative development)

6. There are many forms of English!
Our subjective opinion:
Bangalore, Mumbai, Chennai, Delhi – You may
understand what they speak & write!
Kolkata, Indore, Jaipur, Ahmedabad, Trivandrum – It’s an
acquired skill to follow what they speak & write (heavily
accented!)
Note: This is a sweeping generalization, but a good thumb rule nonetheless!

7. Key cities in a word or two!
Delhi – Flamboyant. Salesy
Mumbai – Enterprising. Financially Savvy
Bangalore – Geeky. Cosmopolitan
Chennai – Conservative. Knowledgeable
Kolkata – Argumentative. Artsy
Note: These are generalizations, but a good thumb rule nonetheless!

8. Customer knows!
Most Indian development teams work with the premise
that you know what you want (even if you are wrong).
Many keep quiet. Some hint. Very few argue.

9. We don’t mean it!
“We’ll try our best” means “We are unsure”
“We’ll see what we can do” means “We are not going to do”
“We’ll come back to your right away” means “We shall
respond after you remind once more”
“We need a couple of days” means “We need about a week”
“We are ready” means “We are 80% there”

10. Numbers are important but not the end!
Once you demonstrate your ability to be a good customer,
Indian dev shops show tremendous flexibility.
Demonstrate by paying on time, being responsive, flexible &
by offering to be a reference.
This works at every level of the organization.

11. There are about 10000 of them!
About 1000 of these are good.
At least 100 of them has someone who can be your
outsourced CTO and would understand ‘startup’ way of
getting things done.

12. Which of these 100 do you know and would
they suit you? Who knows them?
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