Creating distributed startups

Srijan Technologies Pvt. Ltd.

Creating Distributed Services Startups


Running successful services startups

Assuming you have projects, clients...

Lots of customer interaction, communication, commitment

Writing good code

Sprint-end Reviews, Holding people accountable

A great culture of “critique”, “responsibility” and “feedback”

Lots of good developers, lots of “mature” and “experienced” leadership


How do you attract good leadership?

Assuming “you wish to work with people better than you”... how do you find

and work with such people?

They are often in different cities in India (and internationally)

Remote working? In India, feasible?

Pay them high salaries? Small startups cannot afford industry salaries

They often have an “entrepreneurial” spark

They have a context – region they wish to belong to, technology they choose,

entrepreneurial aspirations

So how do you align goals?


An opportunity comes calling

● Born, brought-up in Dharamshala; MBA; worked in Delhi, Mumbai, Shimla in corporates

● Tried running a software company in Shimla

● Moved back to Dharamshala and “be on his own” (goal: generate employment opportunities locally)

● Bangalorean; Mountaineer, Rock Climber

● 22 years in software development; Embedded systems, Quality Assurance, Product development, Moodle, PHP, Linux-geek

● Tag-along sell-out of shares in company; moved to Dharamshala in 2010


Srijan Dharamshala

Srijan is a web services consulting company based in Gurgaon (Delhi region),

and Dharamshala, Himachal Pradesh

Design and build business applications, intranets, portals, and corporate

websites using Drupal

Support/maintain applications built using Drupal

View from our Dharamshala office


Srijan Dharamshala

First mainstream technology company to be present in the city

20+ people; 18 developers, managers

People have moved from Mumbai, Chandigarh, Delhi; lots of locals

International consultants (spiritual seekers; practicing buddhists; tibet-lovers)

come over and teach Linux Sys Ad skills, HR trainings, etc

A beautiful large office; clean air, office cricket team; basketball, badminton;

travel time to office – 45 sec walk to 15 mins by bike; a good life


Evolving Ecosystem

Srijan Technologies, Gurgaon

• Drupal Consulting; Architecture

• Development large projects

Srijan Dhauladhar Technologies, Dharamshala

• Drupal Support and Maintenance;

• Drupal Development (small-mid size);

• Quality Assurance

Srijan ONE

Sales & Marketing


What has it done to Srijan (co-operative of businesses)?

People when they get disgusted with Gurgaon, go over to Dharamshala for 2

weeks; come back rejuvenated; employee retention has gone up

We've got “partners” in the system

That means so many more smart minds – aligned towards the success of the

enterprise

Differential costs of operation; ability to cater to differently budgeted projects;

different regions with different PPP are being catered to


Development Methodology and Tools

Agile SCRUM practices

Typical Project Team consists of :: Developers, CSS

themers, QA engineers, SCRUM Manager, Tech

Architect

JIRA Studio (with Greenhopper) : For defining

Sprints, Tasks, and Releases; Bug Reporting; Code

Reviews; SVN Hosting, Time logging

Story Walls are commonplace at both offices


Geographically distributed SCRUM team


Steps for success

Investment in video conferencing between Gurgaon and Dharamshala for “daily

stand-up meetings”

Commitment to remote QA

Enable specialisation across business units


Thank you!

Rahul Dewan; [email protected]

@rahuldewan

mailto:[email protected]

Technology

Creating distributed startups