Interview with Amit Jain, Director - B2C Info Solutions

Amit Jain  

Director, B2C Info Solutions

Give us a quick overview of B2C Info Solutions. When and how did you begin this journey and what were your motives to be successful in app development?

B2C Info Solutions is a premium digital technology company that provides end-to-end product engineering services. We leverage the power of experience design, cutting-edge engineering and cloud to build disruptive web and mobile applications and enable digital transformation for businesses.
We practice Agile methodologies to develop business-critical web and mobile solutions with a faster time to market. With a team of 50+ passionate technologists, we have delivered over 700+ combined Web & Mobile projects and 400 comprehensive Enterprise Applications for over 400 clients from India, North America, Europe, Australia, Middle East, and Africa.

B2C is a leading mobile development company known for developing stunning native to cross-platform apps giving innovation yet another dimension. We are specialized in the delivery of full-cycle, end-to-end mobile solutions and services for successful brands and start-ups and help to leverage emerging technologies like IoT, e-Healthcare, Big Data and Wearable, Beacon technology and many more

What is your role in the management and development of B2C Info Solutions?

I am the co-Founder & CEO of B2C Marketing and MD at B2C Info Solutions. My forte lies in strategy formulation for capturing and building new revenue streams, value articulation across technology products and solutions.  I am responsible for making corporate decisions and I make sure that each of the employees working here is empowered with the right resources, right team, encouraging them to build cutting-edge creations as and how the clients want.


Tell us about your biggest achievement in the industry

I started B2C 6 years back with a vision to serve my clients for whom we are designing Websites.  We quickly understand Mobile App market that it’s a big opportunity and we planned to act on it. We immediately started and hired Mobility experts (iOS and Android Developers). We understand Mobile App market and business attached to it. The core idea was to offer Mobile App development services at small scale to these clients, but slowly we scaled up to a level where we could serve larger enterprises & start-ups.


How do you schedule the development phases of the apps to promise the timeline to your clients?

We follow a strict development methodology to provide value added services to our global clients. We have set models that work typically for most of our clients. We work on both fixed and hourly based projects. We are very much open to work-out an engagement model that justifies the development and delivery of the solutions based on the end client’s business requirement. The projects which have a concrete scope of work, we suggest clients work on the fixed cost model. However, the requirement which is not clear initially, we suggest strongly to move on an hourly or monthly basis where we bill to the client on time & material basis


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

The market share for iOS and Android is almost equal. We need to understand the client requirement, target audience, business model and expected revenue. We cater to the clients globally and the criteria depend upon various factors.  The budget and target geographies play an important role while we suggest the best solution to the client’s requirements. We also take suggestions from our market researchers so that we could guide the client accordingly. We can start with a single platform or with both but it does fluctuate with the client’s target geographies and set a budget for planned phases.


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?

It totally depends upon the type of app we are building, the audience we are focusing and geographies we have decided to target. We work on both Native and Hybrid app development. The selection of these platforms completely depends on our client’s choice, budget, and app functionality. Indeed, the Hybrid app is not as expensive as Native when compared. We suggest going with Native if the App caters to enterprise-level challenges and equipped with a lot of third party integration. The selection of technology also depends upon the utilization of device properties like GPS and Off-line database management.

How do you scheme your pricing model? How do you fix your budget?

We have 2 different models :-
 
Fixed Cost Model (Milestone Based Payment)

Hourly Based Billing (Time & Material Based Payment).

For Fixed cost projects, we take partial upfront amount and rest we divide the complete payment into multiple milestones. Payment is attached to the successful completion of a particular milestone followed by the client’s approval on the same.

For Hourly based projects, we run the weekly or monthly billing based upon a number of hours burn in a particular week or month. We maintain a time-sheet for each project, based on that we generate the invoices weekly or monthly. We have a standard hourly rate which varies with the developer’s experience level and technicalities involved within the project.


How helpful are the mobile apps developed by your team, for enhancing your clients’ business?

Most of the applications developed by our team are highly rated on the Play store and Apple store. Implies that in terms of UI/UX, they are performing well and that is what we are always intended to have excellent user interface and user experience, while designing the applications for different business. This ultimately shows how well they are doing for our clients. And how effectively the apps developed by our team enhancing the business of our clients exponentially.


What according to you are the best practices to attain client satisfaction?

Project Scoping and Wire-frames

We work dynamically for each project and take care of client’s vision and business model to safeguard the idea and monetary aspects attached to it. Following are the factors we take into consideration before starting any new project which is part of our mobile app consultancy. 

Idea evaluation and risk mitigation 
Effective Client communication and project updates
Fundamental Research
Examining Blueprint
Project Management
Digital Marketing support
Post Delivery support for bug fixing and corrective maintenance


How do you update your business system to be in pace with the technological advancements?

We have a strong in-house team of expert Business Analyst, designers, developers and testers / QA. We have 50+ professionals working from 2 different offices.
We hire quality resources from top universities around the county in India. Our Focus is to retain talents inside the company.
We train our resources to work closely with start-ups and enterprises understanding the business requirement and deliver modern day solutions digitally.
We do have channel partners out-side India as well where we work with them on top notch and innovative technologies and our primary focus is always on project management, execution and its reliability.
 

What are your thoughts about AR, VR, and the Internet of Things (IoT)?

The Augmented reality has become quite a buzz these days. Everyone is wondering how it will impact their life.
For all those who use mobile devices, augmented reality is the future, as it allows users to see a completely different reality. The opportunities in augmented reality are enormous, it's just that people need to sense these opportunities and make use of it in a manner that is beneficial to them.
Similarly the scope or potential for Virtual Reality is huge. We have more and more enterprises looking to use Virtual Reality in Training and simulations. Gaming will be the major scope for VR for the next few years with India being a very young country, VR experience zones are mushrooming and coming up in several metros.
Talking upon the IoT and market of IoT across the globe has huge potential and expected to grow across industries in manufacturing, automotive, transportation, and logistics. IoT is set to become a major differentiation in driving the next generation of services and products.


What do you think will be the future of mobile technology?

In my opinion, the Chatbots/AI is going to be the next big thing within the next decade and going to revolt the UI/UX of the web and app industry, and definitely have boomed. Even soon exchange of emails and any manually performed task will become history.
Everyone will be using chatbots to handle conversations regarding information that can be easily obtained by using an AI-infused system. Bots will simply replace any manual communication systems; therefore customer service costs will also be reduced.