Media Coverage Wire 19: An interview with Divyesh Kharade, Co-founder and CEO of DronaHQ

Enterprise mobility has emerged as a critical platform that is driving digital transformation through radical rethinking of ways for tech to generate new revenue streams or business models. Therefore, companies must adapt or risk being left behind by their competition. Enterprise apps are no longer designed for just smartphones, but apps for mobile, desktops, web, virtual assistants, IoT devices and more.

Team Wire19 recently talked to Divyesh Kharade, Co-founder and CEO of DronaHQ, to know about the journey of DronaHQ, how enterprise mobility is driving digital transformation, how DronaHQ helps enterprises with its solutions, and more.

Co-founder and CEO of DronaHQ
Divyesh Kharade

1. To begin with, let us know about the journey of DronaHQ – from a startup in 2007 to a growing enterprise mobility platform with over 100+ customers now. And if I am not wrong, it started as Drona Mobile. Enlighten.

It’s been quite a journey. Our entrepreneurial dreams started with enterprise platform for Mobile based learning – Drona Mobile. From there we evolved by adding multiple features, functionalities and products that the market needed and now we offer complete suite of products & services with digital enablement platform – DronaHQ.

2. That’s quite inspiring. Talking about the product, can you please give an in-depth view of DronaHQ?

DronaHQ is a Digital Enablement Platform supporting complete ecosystem for Digital Transformation with Low-code Rapid Application Development Tools (Visual Composer – Studio, DHQ SDK, CLI Tools, Meta- Container for multiple platforms like mobile, web, desktop, etc), API creation Tools, API Gateway and professional Services.

3. How has the enterprise mobility market evolved in last 10 years?

Enterprise mobility market evolved from being BlackBerry dominated to cross platform. Initial years saw adoption of Salesforce and field force apps. With growing smartphone penetration and growing internet and BYOD adoption, a wide variety of use-cases are seen. From HR operations, BPM, Sales, Process modernization to IOT and more. Enterprise Mobility is slowly and steadily merging with Digital Enablement & Transformation in an enterprise.

4. How is digital transformation changing the face of enterprise mobility market?

Mobility has emerged as a business-critical platform that is driving digital transformation through radical rethinking of ways for tech to generate new revenue streams or business models. Therefore, companies must adapt or risk being left behind by their competition. Enterprise apps are no longer designed for just smartphones, but apps for mobile, desktops, web, virtual assistants, IoT devices and more.

5. DronaHQ has been offering mobility solutions to many industries like manufacturing, healthcare, banking, finance etc. Tell us about top three industries with the maximum growth opportunity.

DronaHQ is industry agnostic, the platform can be utilized by many industry and use cases. ITes, FMCG, Pharma being top three industries. We see tremendous growth opportunity for employee intranet apps, modernization of legacy apps and digitalization of processes.

6. Can you tell us something about DronaHQ container service? How is it different from other container services?

App is a cross platform meta app that houses all micro apps and thus supports microservice architecture. It has pre-built role-based access control, LDAP/AD integration connectors, essential app features like offline access, data sync, notification service and a dedicated security gateway. It also supports ease of delivery and adoption by reducing app discoverability and app fatigue issues. Thus, DronaHQ container helps to accelerate the time to market and create business growth for new applications with an agile and secure manner.

7. DronaHQ was recently placed in Rapid Mobile App Development category of research firm Gartner’s Hype Cycle evaluations for ICT 2017. Share the experience.

DronaHQ offers a powerful Low-code tool for Rapid Application Development which combines DHQ Studio – Visual composer for designing rich cross-platform apps, DHQ SDK, CLI Tools for Deployment and DHQ Container App housing all micro-apps, with built-in security and advance features. This inclusion by Gartner validated the platform’s capability and boosted its credibility in the markets.

8. Mobile apps are growing so is the data stored and transferred via them. How can users ensure security of their data?

Generally, Enterprise grade apps come with all security standards and protocol after thorough static testing but behavioral testing is tricky. Users need to report loss of device or proper process to wipe data from user device, needs to be followed in case user leaves an organization.

9. Its more than 10 years till DronaHQ happened and the journey as told by you has been inspirational. What’s next? (roadmap)

Our aim is to accelerate an organization’s journey to Digital.

A lot to look forward to, we have amazing features coming up in DHQ Studio which will enable scaling designs and prioritize efficiency and process in design. We plan to implement some IoT based features in the platform. And supporting the digital ecosystem with APIs that interconnect the organization. Our purpose is to improve the lives of IT teams by making design richer, development faster and easier, devOps and delivery smoother, while ensuring that they deliver a solution which their users will love forever.

10. The journey from being a startup to an establishment must have been full of obstacles. What kept you going?

Industry’s trust in our product and services. Support of family and friends and the dream to be the next Oracle/IBM.

Originally posted at https://wire19.com/interview-with-divyesh-kharade/