It’s been almost a month and a half since we launched LeBooks.in. Over the period we have implemented numerous features, removed various bugs and finally had a major upgrade over this past weekend. It has been a topsy-turvy ride with its ups and downs but one thing has been constant, we have learnt a lot and have come a long way since.
Both Rajat and I are essentially non-IT guys. While it did put a big constraint on us (and it still does), we did not let this hamper our plans. We went ahead and outsourced the website in August thinking that it would sustain us for the few initial months while we concentrate on other stuff and build our IT team. Though we knew that the website can make or break our business, we still thought it was an ok-acceptable decision (considering the circumstances, which I won’t dwell into here) for isn’t India an hub for outsourcing and aren’t there numerous multinational companies happy with the work done. Well we were wrong, terribly wrong.
I cannot generalize for the whole web-development and -design industry in India or even NCR based on just one experience but we believe that the state of affairs would have been the still the same if we had instead chosen any other company. This company was “supposedly” the best in the NCR region with a number of big-name clients like Sony, Hyundai, Penguin, etc. in their kitty. As a hindsight it seems to us that for them we were just a small fish to prey upon.
We had made it pretty clear before signing the contract that we need the website by the stipulated date and if it cannot be done then let us know. Also, that we are very particular of what all things we want and how we want them implemented. However, over the course of time, our inputs were totally disregarded. The code for the site was lifted from the code of their other websites. We could easily see commented out stuff such as email addresses with jobs@xxx.co.uk and page categories as Departments, Other Stores, etc. They did not even make an effort to remove this.
Things came to a head when the site crashed, when it could not even manage some 10k books because the database was not normalized, and that too when the site was already delayed by a week and was still half-completed. Attempts to communicate through to the CEO, whom we thought was a decent fellow having started-up and having being featured on “Young Turks”, were of no avail. He mysteriously disappeared after responding to our first mail. We believe that most of these web-companies make websites for clients who are either ignorant and are happy with whatever is given to them or have lots of money to shell out, which we did not.
It hit us bad – a wasted couple of months, wasted money, missed opportunity at the Delhi Book Fair, missed revenues, and more than that dented credibility with our suppliers and publishers whom we had given a launch date. Well the lesson’s been learnt:-
a) When outsourcing services, opt for a smaller company, which needs you as much as you need them. It helps in negotiating contracts. We could not get a clause put into the contract where the web company would be liable for monetary compensation in case of any delays and missed deadlines. Most of the times anyways the contracts cannot be fought out in the court.
b) If you as a start-up need to get a critical service done, then try and do it in-house only, especially when it involves a lot of feedback at every step. Don’t assume that you can outsource and be done with it. Even the best of the companies cannot stick to the exact stipulations laid down by you.
So after the crash, we were pretty much in the doldrums. I started learning coding while Rajat handled the database. My sister also really helped us out. For fully a month, we worked day and night to somehow get the website back up.
Whatever might be your degrees, whatever you might be good at, in a start-up you will eventually end up doing something, about which you may have no clue leave alone any expertise. But the learning is stupendous.
During the process we eventually realized that the basic HTML code was also horrible. The site was not at all W3C compliant with 750+ errors and warning on every page. The styling was done in-line instead of making complete use of external CSS. And then the site took up to 3 mins to load and even more so on slower net connections. Frankly, the site could hardly be used except maybe referred to just family and friends, and that’s what we had to do.
But it turned out to be a blessing in disguise. It gave us a period of trial-run where we became aware of a lot of operational issues. Even after months of planning, one cannot really anticipate all the problems that might occur when you launch a product in the market.
Since then, we have been building our IT team. As a start-up, you need people who are self-motivated, who are quick to learn and essentially don’t need you to supervise them the whole time. We found a great guy in Mayank who has been instrumental in implementing a lot of our current features over the past month. And we are still looking for more.
Finally I am glad to say that we have a website, which though might still be very basic is ready for the world!! 
the paper from tearing. The address label is then put on the bubble-wrap and finally sealed in a transparent plastic bag. Phew!
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