An Interview with Khurram Zaman, Kwanso CEO: ‘Our Goal is to Become One of the Best Software Service Providers in the Valley’

“We are constantly exploring and evaluating new technologies and are gaining more experience in IoT, AI and Machine Learning.”

Building a culture to produce quality software is a huge challenge. Software development companies have a perspective on building a product which is hard to replicate in a non-technology company. They have an institutional memory of years; the memory of failed and successful projects alike. They have made tough technology choices and know what proves better in the long run. Besides, these companies have done all that under unforgiving deadlines. If you are not a technology company, it will take years to gain that experience.

Similarly, it’s hard to pick the NFL’s draft order if you’ve never played football. What’s not well understood and usually gets uncovered after years of operations, is how challenging it is to build a culture where innovation is taking place on a daily basis. The right software development company will do a better job.

In light of the foregoing, we’re thrilled to present Kwanso — a leading web development service provider. It specializes in e-commerce development, UX/ UI design, web and mobile app development, IoT development, software development services, among others. The company has delivered for startups, digital agencies, mid-size enterprises, and Fortune 100 companies.

Kwanso was founded in 2014 and is headquartered in San Francisco, CA.

Khurram Zaman, Kwanso LLC CEO, spoke exclusively to The Silicon Review.

Below is an excerpt.

Breaking Boundaries

Kwanso is a design and development consultancy that helps organizations of all sizes launch new products, or improve existing ones. We started in 2014 in San Francisco, CA and are now about 50 people across San Francisco and Lahore. Kwanso builds solutions for mobile, cloud, web, wearables, and TVs. The company’s full stack developers build accessible, performant, and secure solutions.

“We only use time-tested engineering patterns to reduce dev. time and save costs. Our transparency and full involvement add value and help clients get the right products.”

Communication and visibility are important catalysts in delivering a quality software product.

“Our experience tells us that understanding clearly what the client envisions, and then managing expectations while building the product are key to ensure delivery success.”

To achieve this, Kwanso uses the best and most effective tools. For project management, they use tools such as Jira to provide 100 percent transparency on the progress of a project. For version control, the company uses Github or Bitbucket.

“We use slack for being accessible to our clients. Zoom is our tool of choice for meetings.”

Achieving a Terrific Feat

Kwanso’s unique selling proposition is to produce simple and great software products. Needless to say, simple, fast, stable software with a great design experience is what users desire to use. The company aims at building such products while standing on its values of being communicative, transparent, responsive, reliable, smart, and fast. I believe that the founders bring a certain uniqueness to a company. It is a combination of vision, values, and their ability to nourish and develop their team to bring out their potential.

Developing an Effective Talent Pipeline

Kwanso’s primary development team is located in one of the country’s tech cities - Lahore. Pakistan has a fantastic talent pool of computer scientists. The company’s recruitment is aimed at the top one percent of the best institutions in the country. Candidates go through a tough assessment process, in which they have to demonstrate their coding skills, as well as analytical and communication skills.

“Our core criteria is to hire individuals who are smart and get things done. We like people who are passionate about building software and their work. We believe that to deliver well, skills of the development team working in a simplistic, yet effective, process structure is needed.”

“We also believe that constantly upgrading skills of the development team and the following technology trends are crucial too. For that, we try to adapt to upcoming technologies early on. As the technology terrain changed over the years, we upgraded ourselves accordingly. Now our primary language of choice is JavaScript.”

“In addition to this, affordability and profitability generally comes from the fact that we are operating our development team in a low income but high talent country. This talent ends up at the best technology companies in the world, , eventually.”

Services: To be Launched

Next on the horizon, for Kwanso, is IoT, machine learning and artificial intelligence. We are particularly interested in how these technologies influence the user experience of products, and enable entirely new categories of products.

We’re also seeing more clients who are considering that product path, and need upfront data engineering to provide the foundation necessary to take advantage of ML and AI. We plan to give a big push to its IoT, AI and Machine Learning services. We have produced fantastic software for Fortune 100 brands in this segment and plan to continue doing that.

“We are constantly exploring and evaluating new technologies and are gaining more experience in IoT, AI and Machine Learning.”

Future Arrangements

We are growing rapidly and want to maintain a diverse and inclusive team. We wish to expand operations in the United States, as well as countries, where it can find world class and yet affordable talent.

“Our goal is to become one of the best software service providers in the valley.”

Khurram Zaman, an Influential Leader: In His Own Words

I was appointed to the role of Chief Executive Officer in July 2019. I am responsible for executing Kwanso’s strategy to provide world-class software development services, leveraging global talent, and using modern technology and practices. I am a technology entrepreneur with a wealth of leadership experience gained throughout my 15-year career.

“We only use time-tested engineering patterns to reduce dev. time and save costs. Our transparency and full involvement add value and help clients get the right products.”