Interview with Devanarayanan Gopakumaran Nair, 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.

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.



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


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.


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.

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

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-
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


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.


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.