Service

Mobile app development

Android and iOS apps built alongside the backend they talk to, including field apps that keep working when the network doesn't.

We build Android and iOS apps alongside the backends they talk to, as part of web and app development rather than as a separate practice. The apps that matter most in Himachal are the ones that have to work where the network doesn’t — and that is a decision made in week one, not patched in later.

The decisions that cost money if you get them wrong

Nearly every expensive surprise in an app project traces back to one of four choices made before any code was written.

  • Native or cross-platform. Cross-platform covers most citizen-facing and business apps at lower build and maintenance cost. Native earns its price when the app leans on device hardware or needs exact platform behaviour. Choosing native by reflex doubles your maintenance for a benefit you may never use.
  • What happens offline. Retrofitting offline capability means rewriting how the app stores and syncs everything. Decided up front, it’s a design constraint. Decided in month four, it’s a rebuild.
  • Which phones you’re actually targeting. An app tested only on current handsets will fail on the low-end Android that most citizens carry. That’s where the memory limits and the slow-network timeouts show up.
  • How you’ll ship the next version. Forced upgrades, API versioning and backwards compatibility have to exist before version one ships, because a meaningful share of users will not update for months.

Where we’ve done this at scale

The clearest example is the COVID-19 population screening platform: a field app used by roughly 10,000 health workers across more than 600 sub-health centres, capturing data on about 1.2 crore residents, built and deployed in eleven days.

The network was the hard problem, not the volume. Remote sub-centres had patchy coverage, so the app stored submissions locally and synced them in the background when a connection returned — a dropped signal cost nobody their afternoon’s work. Every submission moved over a secured connection, and the app was tested across browsers and vendor devices before rollout rather than after.

That’s the pattern we scope for: an app whose job is to keep working in conditions the demo never covers.

What's included

How we scope this

Native and cross-platform

Android, iOS or one cross-platform codebase — decided against your budget, your update cadence and how much device hardware the app actually touches, not by default.

Built with the backend, not after it

The same team writes the API and the app, so the two don't drift apart and nobody spends a sprint arguing about whose contract changed.

Offline-first where the network is unreliable

Local storage with background sync, so a field worker in a patchy-coverage area keeps collecting and nothing is lost when the signal drops. We've shipped this at scale.

Store submission and review

Play Store and App Store submission handled, including the review rejections that catch first-time publishers — privacy declarations, permission justifications, data-safety forms.

Tested on the phones people own

Vendor devices and low-end Android, not just a current-generation handset on office WiFi. The failure cases live at the bottom of the range.

Update path planned in

Forced-upgrade handling and API versioning designed at the start, because you cannot assume everyone updates an app the week you ship it.

How we work

The process, in order

  1. 01

    Scope

    What the app does offline, what it needs from the device, and who has to approve it in the store and in your organisation.

  2. 02

    Design and prototype

    Screens and flows reviewed as something you can tap through, not a static mockup, before the build commits to them.

  3. 03

    Build

    App and API developed together against the agreed plan, with working builds you can install and use as it goes.

  4. 04

    Submit and support

    Store submission, the review cycle, and a maintenance path for OS updates that will break something eventually.

Case studies

Where we've done this

Government & public sector

COVID-19 population screening

One portal to examine and capture health data across roughly a crore residents.

1.2 Cr Citizen records screened

  • Government
  • Public health
  • Web app
Read the case study →

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Native or cross-platform — which do we need?
Cross-platform for most business and citizen-facing apps: one codebase, faster to ship, cheaper to maintain. Native when the app leans hard on device hardware, needs platform-specific performance, or has to match an OS interface exactly. We’ll tell you which after we know what it does, rather than defaulting to whichever is quicker for us.
Can it work without a signal?
Yes, and it’s a design decision made at the start rather than added later. Our COVID-19 screening platform gave health workers local storage with background sync so data collection continued through dropped connections at remote sub-centres and synced when coverage returned.
Do you handle getting it into the stores?
Yes — submission, the review process and the rejections that come with it. Store review catches things that have nothing to do with whether the app works: privacy policy wording, permission justifications, data-safety declarations. We deal with those.
What happens when Android or iOS updates?
An app left alone breaks eventually — an OS release, a store policy change, an expired certificate. Ongoing maintenance is a separate, clearly scoped arrangement through cloud hosting & AMC, never assumed to be included in a build price.

Have an app that needs building, or one that's stalled?

Tell us what it has to do and where it has to work. We'll tell you whether it needs to be native, and what that costs.

Talk about an app

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31.0785°N 77.1800°E — Kasumpti, Shimla — 2,205 m