

Ruby on Rails Development Companies in India - theone
http://www.nitinh.com/2009/04/ror-ruby-on-rails-development-companies-in-india/

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unexpected
I think the reason is simple and goes beyond this. By and large, when
developing a brand new product, it's best to have a domain expert in that
specific field or have personal, tangible experience with that product.

American, European, and Japanese developers have an advantage because as
consumers as well as producers in the world's biggest marketplaces, they'll
always have a more fundamental sense of where money is to be made, what
software is missing in what niche, and more contacts, which means more dollars
to chase when it comes to potential users of a product.

Could someone from India have developed something like Basecamp? From a
technical perspective, no doubt. But from a "wow, there are a lot of small
companies in the US that don't need these industrial sized solutions, maybe we
can exploit that niche" - I think this gap is a lot harder to cross.

I think this asymmetry will go away, as India continues to modernize. I bet
there are tons of unexploited business opportunities that could only happen in
India, and no where else in the world. American developers would be totally
clueless on this, and if the roles were flip-flopped, and the dollars were in
India, we'd see the same article about American developers.

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theone
In my opinion as far as software companies are concerned, the gap is bridging.
As computer/internet user base from India will increase the gap of consumer
will fill up. For instance few years ago we didn't had and e-tax filing
website, but as e-return are catching up, few players have come up in this
market as well.

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unexpected
I agree. Though it'll be interesting to see the direction it takes. India
doesn't have a lot of small to mid-size tech companies - the true
"disruptors". Business in India seem to be one of 3 types: 1) Huge offshoot of
American company 2) Huge family house (Reliance, Tata, Birla, etc.), 3) mom-
and-pop.

The first two have tremendous hierarchies and face the same disruption
"problems" that any American company faces. The smaller mom and pops don't
have the resources to compete.

It's hard for me to see where the Teslas, the Segways, even the MySQL's step
in.

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aditya
I think the reason there are lesser product companies compared to services
companies in India is two-fold, culture and lack of easy access to capital.

To start a product company, you have to forego cash up front for a bigger
payout (either acquisition or organic growth in a lifestyle biz) later in the
game. I think most Indian kids coming out of college don't lack ambition or
entreprenurial spirit but it is hard to justify (especially to your parents!)
giving up a steady paycheck for the risk of a startup, and that's where not
having easy access to VC or angel capital becomes a problem. And then there's
the issue of competing with the large software sweatshops on salaries...

This:
[http://munjal.typepad.com/recognizing_deven/2007/04/episode_...](http://munjal.typepad.com/recognizing_deven/2007/04/episode_26_indi.html)

and, this: <http://twitter.com/amitranjan/status/742763842>

make for interesting food for thought.

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emsysman
One major factor I think is what we study. We do not have SICP course in comp
sci, instead we study C, C++, java. I had not even heard of lisp, till I came
across SICP course from Berkeley web casts. Of course I do not think even in
US, they teach ROR, but as PG says, startups and latest and greatest of
technology comes around places where there are good universities. I am in no
way suggesting that places like IITs are not good, but most of Indian IT
industry is not from IITs, that reflects in percentage

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theone
To some extent I do agree with you, but in my opinion the problem is a little
different. The main problem is that, the gap between software companies and
college is very wide. During our course we don't even know what is happening
in software industry. This gap can easily be bridged by making some sort forum
where student can have a direct contact with live software firms.

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theone
To some extent I also agree with the author. Product development scene in
India is really bad.

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ds123
May be this also because of brain in India.

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websevenpointoh
not worth reading. the article is poorly written, the content is completely
summarized by the title and the 'data' the author has collected is merely the
result of him crawling a few job search sites.

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theone
its strange that all comments are from Indians. It would be great if someone
from US gives their opinion on it.

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sarvesh
It is extremely difficult to get funding for a product in India. VC's there
seem to prefer verticals, if you are working on a vertical product you have a
better chance. If all the YC funded were to try and get funding from Indian
VC's I am pretty certain not many would have gotten it. This especially true
after 2000. It is also got to do with past history, most of the successful
companies in India have so far been in those who have developed products in a
certain niche. All this might change once we see few successful products that
more generic.

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theone
Why do they always say its because of VC/funding. Just tell me how many good
startup do you know (from india) those are stop due to loss of funding.
Actually the main reason is that there are no genuine effort in production
development from india.

