Most Indian companies aka freelancers – Shockingly Outdated!!!

Sharing my thoughts on how most Indian companies & freelancers (Probably, many other countries) who cannot deliver service that is been asked for to deliver something that is totally useless.

PS: Am from India & run a registered Web design company.

Forget about the value added service, consultation to the client. Most companies can’t even deliver the actual requirement asked by the client. What it does? Client rehires someone else for the same project again!!

Clients from all over the world outsource to India just to get their things done for cheap. But, it does not mean the client is looking for an outdated service. Client is willing to pay what is sufficient for an Indian currency.

Here’s an incident where I had to deal with a customer who wants his website done in Joomla & he wants to learn this wonderful cms.

Client’s journey in brief:

He intends to start a website with Joomla where he can write articles, blog & administrate with minimum or no programming knowledge.
In this process, he hired a so called programmer (who claims to be perfect in CMS) from India.
Programmer starts the work & stops it mid way where the content was visible on the site and says “It’s done!”.
Company forgets the User Interface, Search Engine Optimization, Adding the value to the site so it helps the client.
Client who is not happy with the work asks for changes to the site & the company stops responding!!!

Well, this is how most of the companies are running here in India. When I had the intentions to run my own private limited company ….my company’s vision was more towards the ‘quality’ service & value added service to clients. But, actually that couldn’t happen because the manpower here had to get trained & I didn’t have enough financial sources nor knowledge to train them.

Getting back to that client I discussed above….he came back to me asking me to help with his website as the previous hired person isn’t getting the work done.

Frankly Speaking, I’ve seen many clients who came to me asking for ‘makeover’ of their present websites.

Here’s the e-mail conversation I had with the above client who on look out for some consultation & way to manage his website. I tried to tell him where he is struck & how his website can complete

Hi

Just spoke to you about Joomla customisation for my website.

I have a website www.delhiunlimited.com which is based on a book I have written on Delhi.

I want to do a bit of customisation to the website and add Google ads to it. I have paid some money to some designer for this, but Ii cannot get in touch with him now.

Let me know how to go about it.

Also, I am interested in learning Joomla from someone who is already working in the area. If you know someone, or if you would like to take classes yourself, let me know.

I am interested in a class every Saturday and Sunday for a month. I can pay in cash after every class. I am also comfortable taking a class online through Skype.

Let me know if you can do something about this.

Thanks

Sanjay Choudhry

My Response:

Hello Sanjay ji,

Joomla is simple yet complicated content management system that can be managed & installed by anyone. However, understanding the customizations & dealing with the administration part of Joomla can take time to most of people here in India. This is mainly because of the lack of expertise & practice with the cms.

The person who has dealt with your current website: http://www.delhiunlimited.com is much the same guy. He has installed the Joomla, configured the template according to the instructions available like any other guy who knows basics. But, he do not know how to customize, how to deal with the SEO part & how it can help you in your business. If you ask me, I can assure he cannot deliver a simple website: http://www.n2growth.com/blog/ even like this because he is more concerned about getting the job delivered, taking the money (or) if not getting rid of his head. This has been the case with many of the Hyderabad based companies who are comfortable in getting the quantity over quality. They hardly care about how the website can help the client & actually, most clients are like that. They hardly don’t bother.

I appreciate that you are willing to spend time & effort on your website along with your priority job. That shows you are a well experienced person.

For a website that sells books & writes interesting articles, we can either use Joomla / WordPress. Joomla is a CMS that requires some amount of programming knowledge which can be avoided in your case & still be managed. WordPress is a Content / Blog Management System that is more for simple article / blog websites.

From what I understand so far, your requirement is pretty simple: You want to get a website which can be similar to a Chetan Bhagat / RGV one but, which helps you do more than just blogging & interaction with customers.

Your preference for Joomla is a good choice becoz you cud make the same website into a book selling store + blog + affiliate marketing one without any major makeovers in future.

I would like to hear about the requirement you have presently. I see tht you have taken a versatility template from rockettheme & there was an effort to display gallery + different categories to handle different articles. And you are looking to make it a complete knowledge based website on various aspects of life around Delhi. Probably, you want to deal with other cities as well in the same fashion with future websites of yours. It’s a good choice as long as making money through it is not your only intention. I’ve seen many people whose intention to carry adsense & earn through it fail bcoz they write for search engines & not for the people. As long as your website can bring in people…even if its 100 genuine visitors instead of 1000 clicks….you would be making profit. So, your content must be unique & refreshing for the people. It helps you get the subscribers, returning visitors & also they become your auto promoters. It’s all a big business as long as ‘making money’ thru it is secondary & intentions are to make it best.

Regarding training, I personally can train you on Joomla but, problem is am not a good programmer nor designer. I can get the work done…I mean better logo, better user interface …100% better than most of the people here. I can help with regards to you maintaining the website yourself, running ad campaigns, which ads to choose, requirement of content writer incase you can’t write content & other stuff tht can help add value to the site. I have a tight schedule (It’s not a big business nor do I make good money) right now. I will be free after 25th of January. Lets see what can be done for the site & how you can manage the site all by yourself.

You can shoot the requirement as well as any questions you have in this week to the same e-mail (or) my personal e-mail id: yuvasweb@gmail.com

Skype: imyuva

Regards,

Sai Bharadwaj

This is the right way of doing the business. Analysis, Consultation, Design, Coding & Testing.

However, This does not happen with most Indian companies.

As of now, I see the people & manpower here are too outdated. We should either be capable enough to train them (or) we should have sufficient financial resources to train the manpower here. That is the reason why, I have my business registered & me sitting at home as a freelancer. Am itching to get back & run my company all over again just to show these companies how we can gain the trust from the clients but, as of now all that I can see is ‘cheap’ money making businesses, outdated technologies & 16th century manpower.

Do you agree with my statement? Do you think most Companies & Freelancers around the world are much the same? Share your valuable experiences!!!

@saibharadwaj

Indian Companies & Freelancers

January 17, 2010 Posted in: My Business Journey