In conversation with Danish Usmani, CEO, OpenSense Labs

In a year-end interview, CEO Danish Usmani showcases OpenSense Labs' achievements, emphasising new client partnerships and expansions. He also highlights the firm's dedication to the Drupal community, innovation, and a promising future for employees.

This is a year wrap interview with Mr. Danish Usmani. Danish joined OpenSense Labs as Head of Product & Growth and was promoted to CEO in April 2022. Here’s a glimpse of his year so far and his plans ahead for 2023. 

Esha: 2022 must have been a special year for you. Congratulations on your promotion.

Danish: Thank you so much. 

Esha: Please share some highlights from 2022 and how you put together an exciting milieu in OpenSense Labs.

Danish: 2022 was fantastic. The year was filled with accomplishments and milestones achieved.

An important feat this year was onboarding Applied Energy Services (AES) a Fortune 500 company and a leader in global energy solutions. This is a huge achievement for OpenSense Labs. At the crossroads where we are right now in terms of growth and experience, we need to lead in the industry, this milestone lays down the path that we should aim for to keep our growth consistent.

We recently added a branch in Bhopal city which will be focused on hiring fresh talent & imparting the OpenSense Labs culture. One key aspect of our expansion is coherent with the growth that we attribute ourselves to where we are heading. The aim of this office is to expand our development capacity so we have more bandwidth & partner with businesses across different verticals. This is also the first time that we are focussed on our training methodology for the entire branch to push & transform each individual into an excellent performer. 

It is a landmark year because we crossed the mark of 100 employees which is a huge achievement in terms of not just growing this company with the workforce but also 100+ happy & proud faces becoming a part of the OpenSense Labs family. We strive to offer our best when it comes to our role as an employer and constantly improve in providing an environment that helps employees to learn, explore, and prosper. 

Esha: Post-covid, there has been tremendous growth in digital platforms and enterprises have started to take digital transformation seriously. How are you planning to scale the growth to meet client expectations?

Danish: Our objectives line up. Not just as a development team, but also as technical partners who offer insight into the project's objective. Our development strategy is consultative while also being guided by our client's needs. 

We offer assistance in forming perspectives, better results, and a comprehensive approach to assisting our clients with all facets of digital, not just goods. 

I'd argue that when it comes to platforms and apps, it's important to be synchronous. To ensure that our project objectives are independent of the future, and to make sure that they work well with one another. 

As a business, we feel that adopting a collaborative approach to the process is the best course of action because identifying project goals and prospects requires numerous inputs and hours of effort.

Esha: According to a RedHat 2022 report, 82% of IT leaders are more likely to select a vendor who contributes to the open-source community. How are you planning to leverage your commitment to OpenSource communities? 

Danish: One way we see how we are trying to give back to the Open Source community as an organization is:

Our continuous effort in creating actual products that are powered by Open Source technology. I can’t go into details since these things are under process however I can confirm that we are 100% committed when it comes to open-source communities and what can be given back to them. 

At the core of what we do can be attributed back to the Drupal community. We actively contribute to all the causes and are Platinum partners. Throughout 2022 we’ve maintained our position in Drupal Marketplace position as one of the Top 10 Drupal service providers. 

We constantly participate in community contribution with in-house contribution sprints and solve the problems of the community with detailed case studies and whitepapers on our client projects so as to share that knowledge widely with anyone who is looking for it.
 
Our most significant effort in this regard is an active content team that has been providing informative content that can readily be credited to contributing to the Drupal community since the company's inception.

We continuously work to develop real solutions that are driven by open-source projects as an organization (which are being tested on a small scale with some of our client projects) and as an active member of the Drupal community as a way to give back to the community. Together, our team has continuously worked to contribute significantly to the Drupal community. 

Esha: Custom software design is becoming more popular. Throw some light on your innovation strategy in order to serve your customers better.

Danish: This is true and I 100% agree. Our strategies & methodologies aren’t very different from other IT companies. 

The best part is how we approach them. Essentially when we see a common problem statement that is across most of our clients, we try to solve them not by deploying more resources but by building smaller products that make things easier. It helps us all move faster in terms of delivery. It closes the gap between the desired and achieved goals. 

A few such examples are how we have automated the frontend and design simultaneously which cuts down the content implementation and also helps the development close the production sooner than with any other development company.

Another common method is to regularly communicate with stakeholders and provide them a glimpse into our product engineering efforts, which not only makes customers' business goals simpler but also saves them money.

Helping the client cover more beyond development is what differentiates us from the market. We extend that knowledge and share them with any partner we are working with the intent of giving them access to tools. 

Esha: What can employees at OpenSense Labs anticipate in the upcoming year?

Danish: We strive to offer our best when it comes to our role as an employer and constantly improve in providing an environment that helps our employees to grow and flourish and become a part of Team OpenSense Labs for a long time. For us, happy employees = productive hours.