Our Story – WAi Technologies

This is our story

About WAi / Our Story

2011

It was in 2011 that the four of us, Kirti, Omkar, Sameer and Prashant got together with the realization that with the advent of cloud, technology will become accessible to businesses. What struck us was “how do we make it affordable and easily accessible to business?”

WAi Technologies formally made its inception in 2012. The focus was on SharePoint Based Solutions that were a part of Office 365 cloud. To start product development we had to build a team from ground up, initiating the launch of a training division that specialized in SharePoint technology and development.

2012

2013

We had a vision to create a sequence of information that could be consumed by users with the help of digital assets that were clubbed together. 2013 saw our very first app being built (Knowledge Exchange) on SharePoint.

This was an MVP version which was downloaded by various entities and used for knowledge sharing and learning development. The application, deployed on the Microsoft SharePoint App store, saw a substantial number of downloads and received some customer attention. While we received the necessary certifications and expertise for the Microsoft Gold partnership on SharePoint related competencies, we could not afford it and signed-up for the Silver partnership.

Based on the early success of the “Knowledge Exchange” product, we saw true potential in building more complex products that facilitated SOPs, Checklists and overall process governance as key features.

With this vision, we started the development of “IN REACH”; a digital platform covering knowledge and learning coupled with process governance. With the evolution of SharePoint; Microsoft introduced “SPFx” (SharePoint Framework) making SharePoint hosted add-in irrelevant to their roadmap text.

2015

We continued to adapt to these changes, invested over $1M and lost other opportunities as we remain focused on product development for over 2 years.

Due to technical defects with the Microsoft SharePoint hosted add-in, our product did not function as expected with Office PowerPoint rendering. As a result, we failed to take the product to market effectively, reaching a situation where we were not able to sustain and continue its development.

Not having sufficient cash to pay salaries to our team members, we evaluated options to survive this. One of our engineers suggested focusing on product development as a service since we had gained deep expertise in solving complex problems and making applications simpler. With this new idea, we designed and launched a new service under the “HireTechTeam” brand. We also transitioned our entire team of 20 developers, from our own product development to customer-centric product development. We were successful in establishing a partnership with an industry leading framework provider that helped immensely during this period.

2017

We achieved Microsoft Gold Partnership for SharePoint. With our Modern DevOps team services and deep expertise on product development, we started making our presence felt and small start-ups and product companies started seeing value in our service offering and expertise that we brought to the table. We also continued our investments in building our team and infrastructure to deliver services efficiently.

Back on a reasonably sustainable track, we achieved Microsoft Gold Certification for application development. We established an in-house studio for creating and publishing media assets and technical content for sharing knowledge and technical advancements. We continued to grow in the service space and started developing customer loyalty and repeat business.

2018

2019

Our customers started seeing the desired impact based on the products/applications that we developed for them. A number of these products got additional funding or investment options and we continued to engage with these customers in enhancing these products.

We also started offering Azure managed services for products that were developed by us and deployed on Azure, setting up a 24X5 support service center for this. Quality Assurance was set up as a separate business practice, which helped both us and our customers deliver high quality products. With growth in our business, our team size went to 60.

With the Covid pandemic, we saw a significant surge in digital transformation needs. We set and achieved internal goals for all team members to be Microsoft certified in their respective areas of expertise.

We saw a greater number of large engagements and successfully delivered more complex solutions that were deployed as global solutions. The UI/UX practice was carved out and set up with specialized focus on delivering products that ‘Look Good and Work Great’. We experienced an exponential growth through the year and our team grew to 100+. The year also saw the launch of an initiative called ‘Women back to work’, with a vision of bringing women back into the mainstream after a significant career gap.

2021

We continue to evolve and grow as an organization that truly believes in delivering value to our clients. We remain focused on being a customer-centric and employee friendly organization.

Our team size stands at 150 with a goal to become a 300-member organization by the end of 2021. We have started realizing our true potential as well as our social responsibility, contributing actively to many initiatives. Our organizational values and philosophies remain strong and grounded and we still believe that we must make a positive impact in whatever we do. We maintain financial stability and growth, standing firm, with a continued belief that ‘partnerships bring value’ to every engagement.