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

I've done a lot of work with Indian development teams and agencies as a client in both the US and the UK.

I've had varied levels of success but the most consistently successful model has been a leverage model. By this I mean that there is one person in the agency whose primary (often sole) job is to manage the communication with the client. This person is representing the customer to the development team. The key skill that this person needs is that they are familiar with and can navigate the culture of the client as well as the culture of the development agency.

For Indian teams this usually has been someone Indian who has worked for a number of years in the US, the UK or Aus but it doesn't have to be. Note, I have generally worked for US or UK companies so YMMV.

Ideally, the go between is physically located with the client. This really helps in the US as the timezone headaches become an internal agency issue to deal with. If they're not co-located with the client then this can still work but the go between has to be really, really good.

This is fine and good but you are creating a lot of process to work around a fundamental problem. Direct face to face communication during working hours is hard to beat.

I see a lot of comments here about increasing code quality, work with your customer on the spec, don't play the lower price game, etc. These are all symptoms of a larger systemic, cultural issue. I'm not referring to the different cultures between regions, I'm talking about the developer culture.

Successful agencies in the west pride themselves on being engineering focused and treating developers right. Treating them right means they are the cherished role in the organization, probably amongst the highest paid in the organization and roles are sought after by junior developers.

A common trend I suspect is cultural in India is that developer roles and most importantly senior developer roles are not prestigious enough. Titles seem to matter more and I witnessed many times competent developers are motivated to 'move up' into PM or manager roles either because of prestige or money.

Address this by creating a culture that attracts developers that want to be senior and grow within the role instead of simply a stopping point on their way (in their minds) to a CxO position that has the prestige.

If you can create a culture in your company where developers are cherished and highly paid, you will likely have higher quality as an output. Sure your price will have to be higher but maybe after a while you can beat your regional competitors on time too. Make sure this culture is actually in place and working before adding it to marketing materials.

I guess most comments in this thread already show you the general perception you'll have to deal with. Here's my take at the three key issues as someone with deep roots in India:

First of all, excel at communications with potential and existing clients. Have at least one person on the team to speak English on a native level. In your description, there are already quite a few mistakes and when freelancers and agencies apply to my gigs, I filter the initial messages out brutally. I don't even look at applications that feature spelling and grammatical mistakes and miss details I specifically asked for. Also, have a person on the team who has been exposed to the culture(s) of the region you want to sell to the most, in order to be able to e.g. say "no" more often and to also admit when you messed up.

Second, never approach a client with an opening line like: "Trust me Sir we are best developers we will do best work and give you cheapest price." You have no idea how many of these I get on a daily basis. You simply don't get the best people at the cheapest price. Define your target group and either sell yourself as a cheap, low-quality sweatshop or continuously invest in great people and training and sell yourself as one of the few exceptional agencies in India that actually delivers great quality.

Third, stop chasing short term profits. This is the worst aspect of doing business in India - most freelancers and agencies rather deliver bad work and get some money, then really putting hard work into in and building great relationships that will create lasting value.

Happy to give you more feedback, just ping me via the e-mail in my profile.

You couldn't summarize it better. I'll second every point you have made. Experienced the same attitude, same code quality and have the same opinion about cost effectiveness.