Parangat Technologies

Introduce your business and what you do there.

The company is a multinational insurance domain company. I serve as a CSC [chief solution consultant].

What challenge were you trying to address with Parangat Technologies?

The MNC [Multinational Corporation] approached me with the task to reduce their operational cost, as their parent company felt that the assistance division was not performing well in Asia-Pacific region. The challenges they faced were dissatisfied customers, lengthy manual operations, customer charge settlement, and payment management.

Another big issue they had was managing an alarm center and their executives, which was a big financial load. They wanted a product that would be of international standards in functionality and would support all major languages used in the Asia-Pacific region.

What was the scope of their involvement?

The scope of the project is generically on-demand service. To be more specific, it is roadside assistance whenever an insured or any vehicle meets with some breakdown, we are there to serve that customer and assist that person. The app was already complex in nature as it was a B2B2C arrangement. This involved placing the largest insurance providers and vehicle OEMs [original equipment manufacturers] under one umbrella, serving customers directly with little or no manual intervention.

How did you come to work with Parangat Technologies?

The business strategy team came up with a mobility solution that could eliminate the manual process and reduce the hefty cost of a call center. The client, being a big-time player, had various levels of approval and authorization involved. I started interviewing companies that could serve as an alliance partner and bear along with the long process of approvals.

I was responsible for finding a partner that could best understand the problem and create a roadmap and solution for the entire requirement. I provided a brief to approximately 20 companies on the basis of location and their size and requested them to submit their bid along with their plans. Parangat was also shortlisted and was informed of the scope and the basic requirements.

Different companies came up with ideas and presentations, but Parangat’s was unique. Surprisingly, Parangat, with its small team size, still managed to prove their expertise as they created a static portable proof of concept quickly which was actually working on the devices of all members of the screening committee. They mapped each of the primary points in their demo, made us confident that the idea we had was completely feasible, and gave us a tentative flow that we would opt to move forward with.

The architecture document that they submitted was approved with some corrections by highly experienced architects that we have in the IT industry. The approach and the UX proposed by Parangat were quite user-centric when it came to customers. The enterprise portion has all data points already captured that we could have thought to be made available at later dates. It was a powerful demonstration of mature and deep thinking while creating the whole ecosystem.

As a next step, Parangat was assigned the job order, and they started working on the project. The project is quite big, and the work is still under development. The project is scheduled to be delivered by March 2017.

How much have you invested with Parangat Technologies?

We spent more than $50,000 to start with and may spend more in the future.

What is the status of this engagement?

The main project took less than 6 months. We expect to be done with the next round of development in March 2017.

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

Their team has exhibited an exceptional delivery model. They have been patient in getting approval from all the stakeholders of the project. The team is flexible enough to collaborate with experts on different time zones, and are normally available for a call throughout the day. The project milestones have been on time until now, and we are rolling very smoothly.

What did you find most impressive about Parangat Technologies?

Parangat has proved to be an excellent partner, and we are already finalizing the maintenance program of the product along with the marketing campaign.

Are there any areas Parangat Technologies could improve?

They don't need to improve much. They should try to adopt more of an Agile process, but I understand that with a fixed cost engagement, agility is something that we have to compromise.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We are the only on-demand delivery services in the Rio Grand Valley, Texas. My company is into delivery services for consumer goods such as groceries, food, produce, stationery, etc., picked up from different supermarkets and delivered to the customer. Our product can cater to any request from groceries to medicine, fast food, and other household consumables, and be delivered in hours to the customer’s doorstep. Our business model works for both B2B and B2C.

I am the COO here and I am responsible for day to day operation, managing diverse parts of the business which include store management, alliances, logistics, and expansion.

What business challenge were you trying to address with Parangat Technologies?

The product is in maintenance mode and the team here is working on adding feature sets like memberships and promo codes. They are also managing some critical changes that could allow more business to get associated with the platform. We have faced a few challenges such as fluctuating inventories of the independent stores, customer's hesitation to pay using their credit card, stores operating at different business hours, state taxation, etc.

This is all being taken care of by the Parangat Technologies team. They are patiently working and collaborating with me to find a solution to address the business challenges that we face every day.

Since we are the only online delivery company in the area, we are trying to quickly capture the entire region and envisage to have a network of more than 200 miles where we shall be actively providing real-time on-demand services.

Please describe the scope of their involvement in greater detail.

They are helping us with consultation, maintenance, and SEO [search engine optimization] services. The project requires long time technical support and the Parangat team will be responsible for taking care of enhancements and any glitches that may appear.

How did you come to work with Parangat Technologies?

I researched the internet and talked to many companies. After a series of meetings, we selected Parangat Technologies to be our technology partner. Two big reasons for selecting them was their flexibility and their cost, which is almost 60% of the standard market rate.

What is the status of this engagement?

The project is ongoing.

How did Parangat Technologies perform from a project management standpoint?

The performance of the team is good and what I really like about them is that they have a “never say no” attitude. They cheerfully accept all changes and try the best to fit even the last minute requests.

What distinguishes Parangat Technologies from other providers?

They have been providing good consultation and have been questioning strategies, which is definitely a good sign of the teamwork we are exhibiting with the project.

Is there anything Parangat Technologies could have improved or done differently?

The team should be more focused on the commitments of the deadline, and should not commit to timelines that may be not realistic.

We are a startup and are focusing on an e-commerce platform with a CRM [customer relationship management] system that can be used by multiple vendors in a software-as-a-service model.

I wanted to create an e-commerce portal that has a complete ecosystem, including a portal for vendors, admins, delivery personnel, logistics, etc. Since this was a large system with multiple clients and with needs like phone, web, and mobile apps to place orders, it was really hard to estimate the durability and the solution's peak load capacity. Scalability, enhancements, and upgrades to the product in order to keep it top notch, were other big challenges that kept me occupied.

Customer responses and refunds, as well as real-time tracking, inventory management, and logistic updates, were a few more challenges that I already knew could ruin the whole concept if they weren't managed well.

I have good experience in my domain, so I was well aware of the practical problems. I interviewed various freelancers and agencies who could help us with a concrete roadmap on how we could create this complete ecosystem. One of my colleagues recommended Sahil at Parangat Technologies, and we scheduled a meeting.

After detailing my requirements, the questions that I got back from the business analyst team at Parangat Technologies were quite shocking. They talked about and covered almost all pain areas that I thought about initially. This was interesting and increased my interest to collaborate with them. They came up with case studies and data fact sheets about my industry that made me rethink my strategy. They proposed solutions using third party APIs that were time and cost effective. This all made me decide to approve the contract and get started with the work.

The only issue that I felt on the project was the time zone difference. However, the transparent communication never hampered the productivity.

The project manager and his team did a fantastic job. We used JIRA as a collaboration tool. Everything was divided into sprints, and frequent meetings and updates on the project kept everyone synced on the progress.

We had a few hiccups on the project initially, when the UX engineer resisted some of the functional flow. This was a complicated lapse and it took some time to get sorted out. It was a bold step on Parangat Technologies’ end to raise alarms and challenge a decision, instead of just appeasing the client. This was an impressive ownership quality that they showed and I am more than fortunate to have such a transparent team working for me.

We are a marketplace for aspiring freelance actors and performers for audio and video based events.

The CrewingUp project aims to connect production companies with specific candidates available to work. The system allows posting job offers with some filtering criteria, and only the right candidates will receive the offer. The users/contractors will be able to set up their availability and reply if they are interested in the job offer.

The main challenge we were facing was to make an algorithm that would be able to expose opportunity to relevant candidates and not to the entire mass on the platform.

The other challenge was automatic moderation to the requirement being posted, and the end client completing the full enrollment cycle on the platform itself.

With the industry being so huge and interconnected, there was always a fear of people drifting away once the prospects started talking to each other.

With these business challenges in mind, we started exploring companies who could help and had portfolios demonstrating similar experience.

Out of our extensive research, we finally figured out 5 companies and had interviews with the solution architects and advisors on what could be the best approach to handle the above challenges.

We visited Parangat Technologies and met their consultant who was ready beforehand with a descriptive presentation, answering every question we passed on when we posted our requirement. He demonstrated a few examples from their portfolio and explained the important aspects which we needed to keep in mind while developing this ecosystem. They had done some good work with a freelance job portal, so it was an approximate match to what we were looking for.

They offered us free consultancy to design the architecture and user story, to which we agreed, and in a couple of brainstorming sessions they came up with a blueprint of the whole concept.

This impressed us a lot and we decided to go with them. As a next step, they created a scope of work and the storyboard, detailing each and every functionality of the project. Once approved, they started with the development while another wing of digital marketing consultants started collaborating with us on the marketing of the app itself.

I can't say enough about the excellent work that Parangat Technologies has done on our product. They started with us in the ideation phase and transformed it into an appealing and informative product. It was an absolute pleasure to work with them. The designer listened to my thoughts and suggestions and far surpassed my expectations. There were minor problems along the way, but these were sorted out quickly and efficiently.

They were prompt in replies and Scrum meetings. We always used to get project status reports on time. There was never any question about the schedule or any variance on the budget. We always felt that the scope and conceptualization were so perfect that they left no room for any variations.

They have shown enormous skill and vast domain knowledge, and their IT expertise is reliable and trustworthy.

e-kabadi is a startup concept for gathering junk from people, where customers can use the mobile app to book and get the junk sold to us.

I am the founder and Chief Executive Officer. Our team size is less than 20 right now.

Knowingly or unknowingly, we create a trail of scrap starting from when you pick up the newspaper in the morning, to every time you buy a can of cold beverage, have a cup of coffee, or go for a vacation. This trail starts when you are born and stops only with your heartbeat.

The junk industry in India is a large but unmanaged industry with little to no governance.

We are trying to resolve this global challenge by rolling out an app where we willingly purchase the junk and incentivize the customer to sell their junk.

The results are surprising because every single household has some type of junk that can be procured and shaped into recycled products.

We needed to choose the right partner to help us with the development. We came across their profile on Clutch and chose them to get started.

We connected and had a few rounds of discussion. They offered to come up with a brief detail and summary. The details shared by them before the awarding of the project made me confident about their interest in the product.

The project is a complete ecosystem, where we have different mobile apps for customers and collectors, and the huge backend management system that has the ability of real-time tracking. The backend system provides helpful analytics that will certainly give direction to business decisions in the near future.

Parangat Technologies helped us accomplish the objective of producing a high-quality product, while at the same time, avoiding the need to onboard permanent employees to handle this major project. The team involved was good at thinking out of the box and they owned the product completely. They were process-oriented and quite disciplined in terms of their project management and weekly releases.

The project duration was five months and they completed it on time.

The solution provided by Parangat Technologies was perfect. Even though their employee strength was of 40 engineers, it never negatively impacted the project. I am confident to say that knowledge matters more than company size.

They added an intuitive set of features and acted as a consultant to key modules in the app. They also helped as beta testers and contributed in the first-hand review of the app.

The team is currently involved in next phase development and maintenance of the product.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the VP of the company.

For what projects/services did your company hire Parangat Technologies?

With so many apps in the market, people still are not able to find an effective medium that could connect two strangers with similar business interest inside a close auditorium/ stadium/ exhibition. We are trying to create a social app that allows business and personal networking based on proximity and mutual interest like interconnected business segments.

What were your goals for this project?

The problem statement was if we can get a guarantee of what could be the most successful way to connect people who attend business expo etc. Technology companies suggested geo-fencing and GPS aids however  GPS qualities in a closed hall or an exhibition center were never promising.

How did you select this vendor?

We have been talking to various technology companies and have been insisting for a proof of concept (paid job) before we can start our engagement. Many of the comapnies even listed on the clutch insisted to get the contract made before producing the POC. however Parangat and few others agreed to deliver the POC and then work on setting up the engagement. The next deciding factor was the cost of the POC and the total contract cost. The Quotes and timeline for the POC was something that matched our expectations and we started working with parangat. 

Describe the scope of their work in detail.

We met parangat and they came up with a completely different technology stack for our problem. The same is based on a Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) where precision is the key and it was an ultimate answer to our problem. They are responsible to create the full project which includes linkedin profile sharing, in app purchase, chat and video callings, business profile sharing etc.

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

The Beta version tested at a couple of conferences held here in India had brilliant feedback and people really appreciated it. We have already started getting inquiries from many event companies to have this product n SAAS models.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

The engineers here are very sharp and they produced the POC version very quickly. They delivered the same in less than the committed timeline. We are very much satisfied with the initial results that we have got.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Parangat Technologies is a confident technology partner for this venture. I am quite satisfied with there execution as of now.