Top app development companies interview: Manivel Rajendran – Mallow Technologies

Manivel Rajendran is the Chief Technology Officer and Co founder at Mallow Technologies. This top mobile app development company was founded in 2010 by Kamalavel R. and himself, it is located in India. The mobile app development company employs 44 developers and IT professionals.

Manivel Rajendran completed his Engineering at prestigious CEG, Chennai and worked for Cognizant for about 7 years. He sarted off his career as a developer with Cognizant and went on to become a team lead there. Manivel was also the onsite coordinator for a couple of projects. Along with Kamal, he found Mallow Technologies in his native town. From then on Manivel has been working as the Chief Technical Officer of the same company.

Here’s what Manivel Rajendran has to say about his mobile app development company and the mobile world:

What does your mobile app development company do?

We started off as an iOS application development company and expanded into developing Android and Web applications. We majorly concentrate on native iOS and Android platforms in the mobile app development. We build applications for iOS in both Objective C and Swift. What makes us different from other app development companies is the wide spectrum of the products we have worked on.

We don’t restrict our workings within a domain per se. One of our differentiating factor is the detailing of the process and developing the product in the user’s perspective. We firmly believe that the success of the product is in the hands of the users, if the users don’t get the feel and experience then the app is of no use. It is important for us to delve into the shoes of the users to develop a product of great quality.

What clients have you worked for?

We have worked with various clients in varied domains. Some of our major clients are:

• Controllex: A Home automation IoT product company
• YES (Young Entrepreneurship School): A Not for profit organization
• Karur Vysya Bank: A Leading private bank in India
• Photo Sydney: An iOS app for the Sydney photographers to form a community and help in photography
• Plant Snapp and Garden Compass: Apps for the Gardening enthusiasts to make their garden better
• Fresvii: A Plug and play mobile service product
• Knowde: A location based IoT product company
• Red Taxi: An Uber like taxi booking app prominent in the south of Tamil Nadu, India
• Bluerover: A Transportation based IoT company
• Menyou: A restaurant based Analytics and Solution company

If you had to choose one category, what kind of app do you think is your mobile app development company’s specialty?

It’s a tough question to answer as we have proven our prowess in developing apps in various categories.

If we have to choose one category then we would say we specialize in Push technology apps. We have created many apps on location based technology and provide real time updates. Providing real time updates seamless is a tough task and our developers excel in that. We helped a transportation company from Canada to track their trucks and update them about the same on a real time basis. The information about the trucks and their location are recorded and then the information are sent to the server. From server the specific details are sent to the users with the devices. Optimizing the push technology has to be done to get the perfect results for the same.

What is the average budget of the mobile apps you develop?

As our clients are in diverse nature we have differentiated the mobile app development cost for individuals and organizations. The average cost for the enterprise app comes around 10K - 50K USD. This is based on the complexity of the project.

Do you develop all mobile apps in-house or do you outsource some parts of the process?

We develop all the mobile apps in-house. The Pros of in-house development are that we will be having the holistic picture of the product and we will have complete control in all phases of the development. Developing the project completely in-house can only make you provide the complete solution to the client. It is tough to find the outsourcing partner who shares the same insight and understands the philosophy of the project and develop a small part of it.

Which would you say are the best mobile apps that your company has developed?

Among the apps we have developed so far ControlleX is the best. ControlleX is an IoT app designed to control various devices in your household with the help of your mobile phone. I would say this as our best for the reason that we have worked with various platforms and integrated various technologies to make the work simple. This IoT project is a revolutionary one and will pave way for many other such products for the betterment of the quality of life.

Paris By Metro/Frankfurt Metro: This is one of the most famous and complex app developed by us. This app helps a user to find the way between the metro stations in the Paris and Frankfurt respectively. Paris is by far one of the most complex metro services. Our app helps to choose the best possible route in metro, offline. Our algorithm makes it easy to find the best possible travel route between the stations.

Do you prefer to build mobile apps with native, hybrid or web languages?

We prefer to build mobile apps with native languages as the native languages give perfectly optimized performance and pure experience for the platform. The problem with Hybrid languages is that it fails to give the experience of the native platform. Hybrid languages compromise in this aspect and have some compatibility issues. Hybrid languages are evolving and it is yet to attain the maturity stage where the native and hybrid platforms provides the same results.

We are also experimenting with the hybrid languages. We always keep ourselves in line with the latest technologies. Hybrid is one such platform which cannot be ignored. We are working mainly with Ionic and NativeScript.

Let’s focus on iOS and Android mobile app development. Which are the Pros and Cons of each platform?

The Pro of iOS is that the platform has little fragmentation and hence a limited form factor. Hence the developer will be able to provide the perfect product. As the devices are limited the app can be very well optimized to work perfectly on all forms. Also it is easy to test the performance of the app as the fragmentation is low. The Cons with the iOS is that the system has a lot of restrictions and so it restricts the ideas of the developer.

The Pro with Android is that it is an open source platform and hence provides a wider space to experiment with the apps. The Con with the platform is the wide variety of the models and hence personal customisation is not possible. Some of the phones might get compatibility issues. Testing the performance of the app is very tough due to large fragmentation of Android devices.

Which one will evolve more within the next 5 years?

After the release of the iOS 10, one can say that Apple is changing a lot on the user side. From a developers point of view both the platforms will evolve in the coming years.

Hopefully Apple will bring in some innovation that might cause the paradigm shift in the mobile app platform. Obviously iOS will evolve in a greater manner than Android.

Which device is the best in the market right now?

I am using iPhone 6. I consider it to be one of the best devices as it is handy (perfect size not too big nor too small), it has a perfect aspect ratio for videos and is fast enough to perform all tasks. The device is so perfect that you can call it as a perfect phone.

And which device do you feel more comfortable developing an app for?

We are very much comfortable in developing for both iOS and Android. If I had to choose one, I would choose iOS. The reason for that is I can test the working of apps in all device versions perfectly and it consumes lesser time. Apart from that, personalization of user experience is possible with iOS due to less fragmentation. In iOS it will be clear to the developer about the things that can be done and things that cannot be done. This helps in getting the clear picture about how the application will work exactly.

Why is AppFutura useful to you?

With AppFutura we see a potential to become a great marketplace. We have been using it for quite some time. The beauty of the platform is it clearly differentiates the companies and gives a clear picture about the companies to the users.

Go to their AppFutura mobile app development company profile to get more information about Mallow Technologies.

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