Your dedicated development team in India
You direct the work. We hold the team together. Your engineers work in your repo, on your board, and in your process.
This is the setup where the team is yours to direct and ours to hold, without you owning anything in India. If you are after something else, start with the four situations clients arrive with.
How the team is built
A team with overlapping knowledge and its own team lead, not a group of contractors who happen to share a client.
Overlapping knowledge
Nobody is the only person who knows a system.
Its own team lead
Senior enough to be accountable, and inside the team rather than above it.
The roles on the team
Developers, test engineers, DevOps and cloud engineers. Built around your system, not a fixed template.
Start with two engineers
You can start with two and grow from there. Most of our teams started small and grew as the work did.
You interview and approve
You meet the people who would join and you approve them. If you would rather leave the selection to us, that works too. Either way, nobody joins your team over your objection.
The team is the who. What the team works on is a separate question.
Who manages the team
You decide what gets built. Running the team that builds it is ours by default.
Direction is what gets built and in what order. That stays with you. Delivery management is the day to day that turns it into shipped work, and that is ours unless you want it.
We manage delivery
DefaultAn AnAr delivery manager runs the day to day and reports to you, against the priorities you set.
It is the part your own engineering managers have least capacity for, and the part we do every day. You keep the decisions and hand over the running of them.
Your engineering managers run the team
If you preferYour own managers run the day to day directly, inside your process.
You already have the management capacity and the appetite to run a team day to day, and you want no layer between the roadmap and the code. Several of our longest accounts run this way.
The arrangement where your own engineering managers run the team, and we are only the team behind it, is the one the market calls a virtual captive.
Which one fits you
If you have an engineering manager with spare capacity for a standup and a review queue, run it yourself. If they are already full, ours runs it and reports to you. Moving it to your side later is a handover, not a rebuild: same team, different reporting line.
Working alongside other suppliers
Our engineers work alongside your own people and other suppliers routinely. Agree early who owns which part of the system, and it works.
Onboarding: the first 90 days
Engineers who already work in your technologies, so the first month is spent on your system rather than on the language it is written in.
Before anyone joins
We match people to your stack and to the roles the work needs. Machines, accounts and environments are set up in this window, so nothing waits on provisioning after they start.
By day 30
Working in your repositories, on your board, in your process. The team knows your system and your conventions well enough to take smaller pieces of work on their own.
By day 60
Settled into the team and handling their own work, whatever the role: building, testing, releasing. Questions go to your side by exception rather than by default.
By day 90
Full speed, with a working understanding of the whole system rather than one corner of it. Work is picked up without a specification conversation first, and the team can bring someone else up to speed on your codebase.
Your work, from the first month. The ninety days are how long it takes to reach full speed on your system, not how long before the team starts.
How the team works day to day
Your repo, your board, your standup, your review cycle. No parallel process on our side, and no handoff between two teams that each hold half the context.
How the overlap window is set
Where that window lands is something we set with you. Distributed teams do not fail on hours. They fail on decisions made verbally in a window half the team was asleep for. So we settle three things up front:
- Which ceremonies need everyone live
- Which reviews work asynchronously without going stale
- What has to be written down because it cannot be said in a meeting
Security and access controls
Engineers work on your identity provider, under access controls granted by you and revocable by you. What we protect, and how
We work to your standards
If your team works in a way that would look unusual to us, the team works in that way.
A monthly retrospective
Whoever owns the India team on your side meets us every month to look back at what is working, what is not, and what we change as a result.
What we are responsible for
The parts that usually go wrong with an offshore team are the parts we are accountable for.
The team stays
Engineers grow on your account and stay on it. On our longest-running team, average tenure is four to five years, and some of the engineers who started the account are still on it today.
Nobody is a single point of failure
Knowledge overlaps across the team by design. No part of your system sits in one person's head, so a departure or a replacement on the team does not affect your delivery.
Nobody learns your platform on your budget
We match engineers to the technologies you already run on, so the team starts inside your stack rather than reading up on it.
No India management layer to build
We run the day to day and report to you. Your managers keep direction and gain nothing to manage.
Your standards, your controls
Your identity provider, your access controls, granted by you and revocable by you. Your IP is yours from the first commit, not on contract close.
Seniority on the team
Architect-level and technical-lead roles alongside developers, test engineers, DevOps and cloud engineers, so the seniority sits on the team rather than somewhere above it.
AI-assisted development, if you want it
Our engineers are expert in it, and the four-phase method they run on is written down and you can inspect it. If you would rather they did not use it on your codebase, the team works without it.
You decide what gets built. We run the team that builds it.
What we need from your side
Three things.
Someone each team can ask directly
One point of contact per team, who can answer a question the same day. If you run more than one team with us, each one needs its own.
Your conventions, once
A short handover of how your team works: your coding standards, your review conventions, the parts of the system that need care. One conversation and the first few pull requests, not a standing commitment.
A relationship measured in years
A team gets better at your system every year it works on it. That is where the value is, and it is why our accounts run for years rather than quarters.
What to send us
Three things: what you are building, what is in the way of building it, and what you have already tried. From that an engineer can tell you the roles we would put on the team, how we would run it, and where we think the risk sits. You do not need a specification, a headcount plan, or an approved budget to start that conversation.
Working with your current vendor
You do not have to end anything to start.
If a vendor already runs part of your team, the alternatives to outsourcing it all over again are wider than replacing them.
Start alongside your current vendor
We can begin on a defined part of the work. Plenty of good teams are built that way, and it lets you see how we work before anything else changes.
Protect the knowledge you have
Years of context sit with the people already on the work. Building beside them keeps it in the room, rather than asking someone to write it all down in their last week.
Grow at your own pace
Start with a small part of the work and add to it as confidence builds. There is no step where you have to commit to everything at once.
If the team is working and you later decide you want to own the company in India, we set that up with you. What changes when the company is yours.
Case studies
A dedicated operations team for a global supply chain technology company
Four years and running, with zero attrition among the key team members. Complete pods, each with its own team lead, and the client's own engineering managers directing the technical work. At the far end of the work is a Fortune Global 500 logistics operator.
An embedded development and QA team for a UK FinTech in AI and analytics
Eight continuous years. Average tenure is four to five years, and engineers who started the account are still on it. Architect-level and technical-lead roles alongside developers and dedicated test engineers, and the client had a say in who joined.
“We wanted to build an offshore team to provide development, implementation and support services for the Supply Chain Industry, but we had concerns about finding the right people and managing them effectively. AnAr Solutions addressed all our concerns and provided us with a team that exceeded our expectations.”
Cofounder and CEO, global supply chain technology services companyBoth accounts run in years. Two different clients, two industries, the same division of labour.
Frequently asked questions
How is this different from an offshore development team we contract directly?
Contracting individuals gets you people, and leaves you holding everything around them. What we build is a team that holds together, with its own team lead and overlapping knowledge, so your system is never sitting in one person's head. You keep the part you want, which is direction.
Can we have a say in who joins the team?
As much as you want, and it is not something you have to do. Some clients interview every person, others leave it to us, and both work. Nobody joins your team over your objection.
On our longest-running account the client took part in choosing the people, and eight years later some of them are still there.
What roles can be on the team?
Developers, test engineers, DevOps and cloud engineers, with architect-level and technical-lead roles where the work calls for them. The mix is built around your system rather than sold as a fixed package.
Who manages the team day to day, and who do they report to?
By default an AnAr delivery manager, and they report to you. Their job is running the delivery against the priorities you set: work planned and covered, knowledge shared across the team, and problems reaching you early rather than late.
Separately, each team has its own team lead, a senior engineer inside the team rather than a layer above it. What gets built is still your decision in both cases.
How much live overlap do we get?
Three to four hours with the US, Australia and New Zealand, and almost a full working day with the UK and Europe. Where the window lands is set deliberately when the team is put together, rather than left to work itself out.
Can we start small and grow?
You can start with as few as two engineers and grow from there. Most of our accounts began small. Growth is a conversation rather than a contract amendment.
What happens if someone moves off the team?
Continuity is ours to hold, and it does not become your problem or a change order. Because knowledge on the team overlaps, whoever picks the work up is ramping onto your setup over two to four weeks rather than starting from nothing.
Who owns the code and the IP?
You do, from the first commit rather than on contract close, and an NDA can be in place before the first conversation. What we protect, and how
What if we do not want AI tools anywhere near our codebase?
That is a common position and a reasonable one. If AI tools are not permitted on your codebase, the team works without them, and that is set when the team is put together rather than left to each engineer to decide. Nothing else about the arrangement changes.
The reason these accounts run in years is not that we found unusually loyal engineers.
It is that you kept the direction and we kept the team, so neither side spent its time doing the job it is worse at. You know what your system needs better than any vendor will. Running a group of engineers in India for five years is our problem to have.
Tell us the situation. An engineer reads it and writes back within one business day with how we would set it up and why.
Tell us what you're planningContact us
Tell us what you're planning. The situation, not a requirements document. You can come to us with:
- A roadmap that doesn't fit your headcount
- A vendor arrangement you want to build on
- A team you have already built that isn't holding together
- A rough idea and no view yet on how to set it up
An engineer reads it and writes back within one business day with what we would recommend and why, including when what we would recommend is not us. Not a meeting invitation, not a deck, not a sequence.
You will speak with engineering, not sales. The person who answers is the person who would work on it, and they can answer technical questions in the first reply.
Tell us what you're planning
A few details so the right engineer can read it and reply.