Ask HN: What are your views on India based development agencies?

Me: Can you blah blah blah?

Them: Yes

Me: Ok, and would you be able to blah blah blah?

Them: Yes

Me: Great, and do you think that will be ready by blah blah?

Them: Yes

Me: Fantastic. What approach do you intend to use?

Them: Yes

Me: mutes phone, curses, unmutes phone, goes back to start

I've occasionally worked with some excellent individuals, but the aggregate has been poor.

My most recent experience with a team of this type repeatedly involved requests for documentation at a level of detail where automating the task would be less effort.

The biggest problems are cultural, but the perception is going to be hard to overcome.

I kind of get what you're saying. I live and work in Germany where there is the stereotype of a very high standard that we carry around on all our products i.e. there are companies that would not do business with us if they did not get the "Made in Germany" stamp from our exported goods/services. This is an image - whether correct or not - that was acquired over a long period of time where many companies (BMW, Bosch, Siemens, BASF, Bayer, etc) provided high quality goods/services and built up an international image.

Anyway, this is a positive perspective customers have, and I admittedly benefit from it when doing business. In a lot of ways, the opposite can be said in terms of stereotypes for India, and so that's tough and I suppose what your question is about.

The thing is, even if perhaps I get an initial project in part due to a positive stereotype, that customer will not recommend me or use me again if I don't perform excellently for him i.e. making him better off through the interaction.

So that's what I focus on. And if you do that, in my experience, stereotypes won't matter at all. You won't be an "Indian Agency" but "Insert your company name" who does great work.

Some things I do to keep/maintain customers are: having very high standards of quality i.e. if a customer uses me I want them to remember me as the best contractor they ever used, they should be impressed at how clean/well-executed/designed/on-time the software delivery was. I also keep things professional, succinct and timely, and goal oriented and expect the same from the get go. Also if anything is not clear to me I make sure we clarify it and get on the same page immediately. Clients and you both hate wasted time/effort.

Finally, on the personal side I try to constantly self-improve and hone my areas of expertise so I can get things done more efficiently and be quicker on my feet and more creative/innovative with my solutions for customers. This is actually really big. Most (good) clients really really want someone who can think for themselves, is creative, and takes a problem and brings back an amazing solution. This can be difficult, I know, since a lot of clients won't give you enough information or even attempt to think their own problems through, etc. But with some you can help (being upfront, asking well-formed precise questions), and with the worser ones you can usually recognize them very quickly even in the initial project discussion and my advice is always walk away.

If you do these things, you will have absolutely no problems finding customers who love you and recommend you to everyone regardless of where you come from (at least IMH experience).

Best of luck.

The core problem is that companies from US or Europe contracting Indian agencies do it because of price. It's always more convenient to contract a local agency, in the same timezone.

For that reason, most Indian companies focus on getting the cheapest price and do so at the price of quality.

If you want to do quality work, you'll have to hire more expensive developers and you'll be more expensive. You need to figure out a good positioning because you'll be more expensive that your local competitor, and less convenient than firms closer to your clients. Add to that the low quality image that won't go away until all your competitors start going for high quality development.

IMHO it's more like - "let's not lose this contract".

I taught a dozen or so as part of our outsourcing years ago at Consultancy in Vashi Mumbai, all except one turned out to be useless (this one guy was awesome though, I always wonder what happened to him against useless peers), and these were apparently the cream of the crop. All stereotypes turned out to be true, shit code, slow progress, no straight answers, record high hours recorded, frustration with the loose neck and yes man responses,in end outsourcing was canned. Hospitality was great though, nice people, musuems, awesome food, kingfishers, trips to Goa, Id do again if against a more generous expense package.