#appointy

This blog is about why and how we were able to scrap 9 years old code and started thinking fresh.

Chapter 1: APPOINTY IN THE MAKING

Between 2004 to 2006, we used to develop websites over WordPress for the Health and Wellness industry. There was a WordPress plugin for almost every need – except a scheduling plugin. We got so many requests for a scheduling plugin, that we could not keep up!

So, we wrote our own script. A script that would allow us to save time by not having to build the same code again and again. One of the first challenges that we faced was that every vertical has specific requirements. So, we created scheduling rules to generalize our script for different verticals.

Soon the demand for scheduling increased and Appointy first went live in Jan 2008 with “Do it Yourself” concept.

Unfortunately, in our zeal to please every customer, we kept on adding features and Appointy become overwhelming. And then the same customers started complaining. We realized that we are moving away from the Do-it-Yourself concept. So we went back to the drawing board with the idea to make it simple again while keeping the functionality.

It costed us one whole YEAR. But we learnt an important lesson.

Appointy is a bootstrapped company (never raised any external funds) and had to make money from customers to survive. We believe that the best way to make money is to solve someone’s problem first and then ask for a fair price. The more we can help our customers, the more we will grow.

We started improving our on-boarding and support process. But we soon realized that every business is unique in nature and needs something different. It simply meant that we not only needed to add to our support team but also that we needed to get more programmers. We needed a way to scale vertically in all departments.

We started hiring more programmers. After a few months, during a scrum meeting, a new team member shared that he was happy that something that he had written was live on our production site. For him, it was definitely an achievement. However, I was not happy. I realized that there is something wrong in our setup if it is taking months for new programmers to becoming productive.

2017 – Resolutions For A Happy New Year

“A New Year’s resolution is something that goes in one year and out the other.”

–Author Unknown

Welcome to the upcoming New Year!Let us get over the past, the challenges, the obstacles, the difficulties and the turmoil. Let us start afresh to create a new environment of change for the better, towards year-round growth. Why don’t we pledge to generate harmony, create opportunities for success…

New Post has been published on http://techinews.org/meet-16-startups-picked-microsoft-ventures-summer-acceleration-program/

Meet the 16 startups picked for Microsoft Ventures summer acceleration program

Microsoft Ventures India has announced the list of 16 startups for its summer batch of accelerator program for 2014. Of the total 16, six startups will constitute its newly-launched Accelerator Plus Program, which is tailor-made for startups that have customer traction and know their market fairly well, whose needs are vastly different from early stage companies. “The good thing about this batch is that most of these companies already have a certain amount of customer traction and the accelerator program is well positioned to step in and help them move ahead faster than they would have otherwise,” said Ravi Narayan, director at Microsoft Ventures. According to him, this program is for more mature companies which are closer to raising VC funding.

Here is a sneak peek at the summer batch of startups. Appointy: A scheduling software that helps businesses to schedule appointments, accept pre-payments, send reminder alerts, update social networks and personal calendars, create promotions, create discount coupons, manage and grow virally. App Virality: A solution that let one’s app go viral on social media, increase the number of app downloads, and identify top influencers and communicate with them.

Bookpad: Provides an enterprise product called docspad.com that enables customers to provide preview, edit and manage any documents on their cloud – right in their application user interface. Boutline: It lets one set up social tasks and challenges for an event audience and enables him/her to reward the audience for influencing the masses.

Imly: An online aggregator of home chefs. The portal is a full-fledged marketplace that currently offers 1,265 dishes from over 150 home chefs from 10 cities. InstaSafe: It aims to make it simple and safe for companies to securely access enterprise-provisioned on-premise applications, public and private clouds, from anywhere.

IntouchApp: Enables one to automatically view up-to-date information of his/her contacts on mobile as well as online. Metaome: A Big Data company for the life sciences space. Its flagship product, called DistilBio, combines graph search and data integration technologies to accelerate drug discovery by connecting across diverse data in life sciences.

SlideRule: An online learning solution that helps one discover the world’s best online courses in every subject. Voonik: A stylist-handpicked online fashion store. MyBusTickets.in: An online bus ticket booking platform. Praxify: An online healthcare venture for doctors, patients and hospitals.

Thinxtream: Provides DeviceMaestro Smart, an intelligent, secure and open machine-to-machine (M2M) application to enable organisations to implement their M2M strategy. Touchfone: Provides an instant messaging platform called Chat n Play. ZingHR: A HR management software for SMEs as well as large organisations.

Zoom: A membership-based, self-drive car rental service. Microsoft Ventures in India has mentored 35 startups since August 2012, of which about 80 per cent were funded while two – Adepto and Plustxt – got acquired.

Tags: App Virality, Appointy, Bookpad, Boutline, Imly, InstaSafe, IntouchApp, Metaome, Microsoft Ventures, MyBusTickets.in, Praxify, SlideRule, Thinxtream, Touchfone, Voonik,