Welcometo our world
Back left to right: Richard, Faraz, Andy, Amjad, Nouman, Gertjan Front left to right: Asna, Sobia, Shazia, Noor, Imran, Haris
Rutgers WPF is a centre of expertise on sexual and reproductive health and rights. They work mainly in The Netherlands, Africa, and Asia to improve sexual and reproductive health and rights. Rutgers WPF Pakistan has recently asked us to become their technology partner so that they can reach out to young people in Pakistan on mobile and the web working through social media, sms, mobile apps and websites. The first fruits of the partnership will be available to the Pakistani public by the end of this year.
This is Yumna. She has been working as a PHP / CodeIgniter developer with us and although we tried to convince her with lots of chocolate she decided to continue her studies with a full-time masters study in software engineering. So we are left with a vacancy for an experienced (at least 2 - 3 years) PHP developer who likes to learn Phonegap too.
Today in Trouw, one of the quality newspapers in The Netherlands, an article about how the world is discovering Pakistani IT talent to outsource their software production.
Earlier this week our CEO, Gertjan van Laar, was one of the speakers at the Pakistan App Summit, part of a the global telecom conference ITCN Asia. He spoke on app entrepreneurship and encouraged young people to start their own mobile apps outsourcing business. In his talk he shared some insights on how Pakistani entrepreneurs can overcome the cultural gap between Asia and the west in communications and expectations as he has 15 years of experience on both sides of the globe.
Yesterday a Grappetite team has participated in the Crack It hackaton, organised by the Pakistan Advertisers Society. Over 50 teams from all over Pakistan joined this competition: within 12 hours they had to come up with a strategy, an idea and a prototype of an interactive marketing solution for a given case. Our team came up with an app idea (what else…) and quickly prototyped the app. We are now waiting eagerly waiting to hear from the panel of judges who will pick out the 10 teams that make it to the second round.
The Netherlands is the 5th largest investor in Pakistan, Grappetite proving this on a small scale. This week the Dutch Embassy in Pakistan launched the Dutch Business Circle Pakistan to celebrate and encourage the opportunities for trade between Pakistan and The Netherlands. Grappetite is now part of this business circle as well, joining big shots such as Philips, Shell, and Unilever. His excellence Ambassador Marcel de Vink presented a commemorative plaque to our CEO, Gertjan van Laar.
Our clients often wonder if they should go for iOS first to launch their app or start with Android. In many countries iPhone and Android both have 50% of the market share. Forrester recently published a study which shows that iOS users are 30% more likely to buy apps and do in app purchases with their devices than Android users. Easy choice, if your product is a paid app…
In the past weeks, three new people joined us. Nouman Hassan joined as art director, Richard Blazey and Shahbaz Azizuddin are both project managers.
For Zig Web software, we recently make an iPad inspection app for housing societies. Until recently, all reports of the inspections of left-behind houses were paper-based. With this smart app, inspectors generate a list of items to be inspected based on the type of house, add pictures to reports of any issues they find, and have the report signed by the client on the sport. Transparency everywhere: best for the tenant and best for the housing society. Check out the demo video, explaining the app (in Dutch)Check out the demo video, explaining the app (in Dutch)