A Minimum Viable Product is an excellent way for companies (especially start-ups) to understand and learn about their target audiences before developing the final, fully-functional product. It tries to prove the concept for a single-sided product, which focuses on nailing down the viability of the platform.

MVP, a business model with the minimum amount of custom coding and complex features, lets you test your assumptions and learn from the outcomes.

Today, in this post, we have compiled the top 11 famous services that were born from MVP which you tend to use every day:

1. Uber

Before launching the final version of the app, through UberCab, Uber first tried and tested to just connect their riders with drivers and accept payments. Uber’s MVP was accepted across the globe by both customers and drivers as they exactly found a relevant and prevalent headache, which has booking cabs.

As a simple concept, Uber Cab had let them enter the market in a short time, receive real user feedback, and expand to the brand they are today.

Essential Features:

  • Live-tracking of drivers
  • Fare estimations
  • Fare splitting
  • Instant credit and debit card payments

2. Dropbox

The famous Dropbox, instead of releasing a product as their Minimum Viable Product, they launched a short video that demoed their product’s first ever development, explained their core values and showed how simple it is for everyone to share all sorts of files across their devices. After they released this 3-minute video, the beta sign-up increased from just 5,000 to 75,000 instantly.

Essential Features:

  • Integration with MS Office
  • Dropbox for businesses
  • Collaboration
  • Upload images and videos from tablets, smartphones, etc.

3. Instagram

The very first version of the very famous and preferred social media platform, Instagram, lets photo sharing with just a few filters. They had entered the market which was soaked with other photo editing apps and tools that were common and gave tough competition to Instagram. However, the company offered a Unique Selling point (USP) that was a combination of both image sharing and editing.

Essential Features

  • Direct messaging
  • Boomerang videos and videos
  • Added new filters

4. Airbnb

Without having to involve the middlemen, to be able to provide short-term renting is the primary mission of the Airbnb. In order to test their idea of renting a loft for short-term trips, the founders of Airbnb offered accommodation for people who came to town for tentative periods. Soon, they launched a simple website that explained, how tourists can take advantage of Airbnb.

Essential Features

  • Selection of high-quality and well-equipped homes
  • Service hospitality included
  • Hosts provide daily essentials

5. Facebook

Facebook’s minimum viable product was pretty much similar to what LinkedIn had introduced. No applications, no news feed, no sort of status updates, and a lot of things were absent. Back when it started, all Facebook did was let students at Harvard university access to utilize within the university. The application was also made available to a tiny group of people to test and gather user feedback.

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Essential Features

  • News feed
  • Photo and video sharing
  • Live video streaming
  • Sending messages

6. LinkedIn

The very first version of LinkedIn had got out with not too many features. For example, back then, users couldn’t endorse their connections for skills, write a recommendation, or even get a list of recommended connections. Everything on LinkedIn today is  created after the initial assumption was thoroughly tried and tested.

Essential Features

  • Incorporating keywords to enhance the profile
  • Recommendations and endorsements
  • Adding work examples, images, videos, etc.
  • Advanced people finder

7. Foursquare

When it was first launched, Foursquare had only had famous check-ins and badges for finishing particular activities. With their initial findings of the MVP which had only one main feature, Foursquare incredibly increased the market of apps with their location-based services.

Essential Features:

  • Check in at business places or attractions
  • Write reviews
  • Finding attractions

8. Pinterest

Just like the above ones, even Pinterest had a Minimal Viable Product. The platform offered enough utility for users who wanted to visually bookmark their interests. They made the pin one aspect of the Minimum Viable Product as it enabled the functionality. The early users of this product validated it as the product-market fit and made one of the best platforms for bookmarking recipes and fashion.

Essential Features

  • Collect photos as visual bookmarks
  • Share lists with anyone
  • Follow pins and lists from your connections

9. Zynga

Games and social media easily go hand-in-hand now. Back then, there were two extreme ends. When it originally introduced, Zynga was a poker game which let users go live on Facebook. This made a lot of difference and helped them to venture capital to fund titles such as Farmville.

Essential Features

  • Competitive tournaments
  • Casual Texas Holdem poker
  • Play across devices

10. Zappos

When Zappos was first established, they literally went into shoe retailing without keeping any sort of inventory. They started providing the photos of a variety of shoes they wanted to sell and if any customer placed the order then they would the particular shoes. This greatly helped them to study their target market.

Essential Features

  • Free shipping
  • 365-day return policy
  • Personalized product recommendations

11. Spotify

Spotify is another fantastic example of an MVP. As they wanted to develop a music streaming service, they specifically targeted music streaming for their MVP. Spotify built an application for desktop and run a closed beta for testing purposes on their target audiences. When they figured that their MVP was exactly what users wanted, they started signing with more number of artists.

Essential Features

  • Syncs smartphones with desktop
    Intuitive search by genre
    Undelete playlists erased by mistake

Wrapping up

While there are numerous ways to accomplish goals in businesses, Minimum Viable Product is the go-to solution especially for start-ups because of the scarcity of the funds in their backpacks.

Small and medium-sized companies are also becoming the frontier of innovation as they would have fewer limitations when compared to the enterprises and corporations. That is why it is important to test your ideas before you make them big.

With a world full of Android apps and iOS apps, it would be pivotal to make your app stand out from your competitors. And for that to happen, it is important to choose the right strategy for developing an app and not to spend your entire funds just on a single aspect. Well, there’s a way and that is MVP — Minimum Viable Product.

Of course, now you might be thinking that you all are familiar with Minimum Viable Product (MVP) and how it is helpful for start-ups and SMBs in reducing the unwanted costs and gives a chance to market test your product-related risks. But nobody knows how much it costs for mobile app development in India.

Let’s dig a little into the details.

But do we need an MVP at all?

Well, the app stores are heavily loaded with numerous apps and typically, 8 out of 10 apps fail to impress their users. Whenever you are planning to implement your concept or idea into an app, you need to be a more little careful than usual when it comes to mobile app design, the whole development process, costs, customers, etc. as these elements consume a lot of time.

mvp

This is where an MVP comes into the picture. A MVP mobile app helps your business to take a look at the future reflection of your concept and to learn the customer market significance of the app with minimum development costs and time.

How to build an MVP?

Usually, when you are developing a mobile app, you would start the process with selecting the right and flawless design and then work all your way up to the usability, reliability, features, and then functionalities. But, this way, there would be no end to the development costs.

Instead what you need to do is start with choosing the essential functionalities and features that you think would make difference and help your customers in solving their problems and then finally, choose a design that fits with the present app.

Now, coming to the main question. How much does it cost to build an MVP mobile app in India?

Honestly, an MVP costs nothing provided you do it yourself. But then again, it might not be as efficient as it could be if got it done by a professional and when it is not efficient, it would miserably fail to impress your target audiences.

When you try to find the cost of an MVP mobile app on Google or other search engines, you would mostly find vague answers and numbers. That is why we thought of providing a lengthy, actually a bit lengthy answer to your question.

It is no surprise that the cost of an app development is the primary factor in deciding whether you would continue building the app or not. However, when compared to the cost of actual, complete mobile application, an MVP app costs much lesser.

But what is the exact cost of an MVP?

Coming to the options of building an MVP mobile app, there are typically 2 ways (Excluding DIY).

  • Hire a freelance developer
  • Outsource it an IT company

Just like any other usual mobile app, an MVP cost also depends on the type of method you pick. The cost of hiring a freelance developer varies from country to country.

But India is certainly one of the most cost-affordable countries for IT solutions. However, freelancers would charge you anywhere between from $10/hr to $200/hr and mid-sized IT companies charges range somewhere around $2500 – $11,000.

For a better understanding, let’s dig a little deeper. Even if you consider the shortest possible timeline for your MVP development which is 30 days —

40 hours*$30 = $1,200/week

$1,200*4 = $4,800 — The total cost of your MVP mobile app

So this total cost could be ok or fine for some people and it may not for others. Also, this would be the cost of your MVP considering it only takes 30 days to build. But there are cases where it would take months, maybe 2 or 3 depending on the features and functionalities just like a mobile app.

Nevertheless, there are some common issues that could prolong your MVP development process a little more than you anticipated.

Keep the MVP design costs to minimal

Even before checking out what kind of features and functionalities your app has, first your customers will judge your MVP mobile app based on the design and how it looks. The design of your MVP is just as important as any other aspect because this is what the final output of the mobile app is going to look like. Anything other than the outline cannot be considered in this process. Additional changes are only done, once the app is launched.

The UI of your MVP should be simple and easy to navigate so that your users won’t find it difficult to search for anything. Depending on the number of screens of your MVP app, you can get a fair idea of how much it is going to cost you.

Also, what you need to understand is that the initial design is altogether a different and separate expense.

The Total Cost of MVP App:

As I already said, to figure out the final value of your MVP app cost, you just need to multiply the number of hours required to build it by the price of the hour freelance developer charges you.

The below table will give an outline of how much your MVP is going to cost.

There are certain elements beyond the development process of MVP such as:

Elements Beyond MVP Development

  • Initial release
  • Taking reviews and feedback
  • Data analysis

Once you launch your MVP, continue for a brief time as MVP is. If your customers love your app, then they will ask you to release a full-featured and functional app. By making the required changes and tweaks, you can release the final version of your app.

But, if your customers have mixed feelings about your MVP, then ask them which features they like and which they don’t so that you can improve their user experience.

In any case, you get totally negative feedback, and then stop the project for a while. Learn what your customers are expecting from your app. Otherwise, you would just be wasting a lot of money that would give you absolutely zero ROI.

Wrapping up

Now that you have understood how to proceed with your MVP mobile app development, this will surely give you an edge in negotiating with developers and IT companies. In addition to that, you know what to expect from your MVP, you can plan it in a better way on how to improve it and present it to your investors to raise more funds.

Any entrepreneurship sparks off with doubtful thoughts and a cloud of confusing ideas which somehow end up being a one great winning strategy. In the beginning phase, what often puts you in the muddle is the question: What if users don’t like it or can’t relate with the solution I offer? When it comes to designing an app, this question becomes the crux of the brainstorming. Thankfully, there is an MVP (Minimum Viable Product) that can let you feel easy save you from the torture later.

Since MVP is a feedback-driven app model, it helps manage the product development quite in it early stage relying on the real-time responses of users.But again, for any start-up business, it is important to first understand the babysteps for MVP as to what it really is and what it means to businesses launching their next big app in the niche market.

Let’s take a wider look at how MVP benefits mobile app development from a broader business perspective.

What is Minimum Viable Product?

Basically, MVP is a first compact version of the main product developed and launched to test the value and acceptance of the idea. More like a base model, MVP is usually built with minimum but essential features that define the product, and it helps determine the market potential as well.

However, MVP is definitely not an amateur model, but rather focuses on a future growth presenting a mature product model that contains most important features for fetching feedback from customers.

How does MVP work?

After creating an MVP for a mobile app in a standard app development cycle, the team of developers releases MVP to a specific user group or into the market to see if it works. If MVP does not appeal to users, it means that either developers need a different directions for mobile app development or the app idea needs some polish and attention.

MVP in a way helps understand users’ perception of the product idea and how to further improve the product performance and its impact. Thus, mobile app MVPis considered to be an active yet minimalist model of an actual product and not the product undergoing various stages of development.

Benefits of MVP for mobile apps

Given the fact that MVP stands for checking the viability of the product idea, it brings following benefits for mobile apps:

Rich entrance with minimum risks for smart entrepreneurs

MVP is rich, risk-optimized investment for smart entrepreneurs

For smart start-up entrepreneurs, MVP mobile app works as a starting point which, upon being successful, results in a scalable business. Due to wide user base spread globally, it helps you set your foot quickly in to the market and access the user experience without investing a big slice of your budget.

When starting a business, risk management plays the key role in determining the success of the product. MVP helps evaluate the risks involved and project the impact of deliverables in the target market.

MVP is the essence for Lean Startup success

An MVP for mobile apps effectively supports the dream of Lean Startup where idea is the primary fuel and is processed with restricted budget in limited time. As it fits well with the Lean start-up approach, mobile app MVP helps acquiring customers faster than any other method. Interestingly enough, the minimum viable product gives the start-up ventures the quick insight into existing market trends and its future promises, and makes them see what they otherwise can’t without even spending a fortune in the process.

MVP product development keeps your guesswork to a minimum

By shaping an MVP model, the potential area where business feel at an advantage is its ability to test the product value for users without exploring market the hard way. With an MVP, you can confidently touch the surface of how the product performs and makes difference to users by checking the progress on our own.

You don’t have to spend months working on a full app version that may include features rejected by users. Since people are often vague about their exact needs, MVP clears the cough and presents users with several options until they find the one that seems interesting.

MVP means cost optimization

Since MVP does not require to build all the features in one go, you don’t have to worry about making a heavy initial investment. It tests the success and impact of an idea at a very beginning phase, saving you a lot of money in the long run. As you launch the first release of mobile app to a chosen market, you can determine the precise interactive personality of your product, which also you generate more revenue.

Technical performance and resource management

This is another considerable gain of launching MVP for mobile apps. As users post reviews and express honest opinions about how the initial version of your mobile app is actually performing, you begin to gather a clear picture of how to address the issue with right technologies and tools what quality of human resources can yield better output.

Security improvement and feature enhancement

If your app has security threat issues and left loopholes for data loss, it becomes the most critical hurdle for the business. The app with bugs is the biggest disappointment. Users are unforgiving to this and choose to delete the app over waiting for the solution. MVP helps you correct the mistakes and improve the security aspects of mobile app in time. As the issues is resolved in the initial stage, there is less risk of losing reputation and brand image, and a bigger chance of winning back happy customers.

Inspiring Real-time use cases of MVP

Most all the highly successful social media travel assistance mobile apps started from the basic level and gradually scaled up after attaining the significant impact in the relevant market If you have been using Facebook, Twitter, Uber, Snapchat and Instagram for more years, you would know there were not the same when they were launched. These are the real-time use cases of how starting off with an MVP helps you rise to the pinnacle with wise tactics.

Facebook: Intended to connect people virtually irrespective of their location and country, Facebook revolutionized the way people socialize with their friends and make new ones. It pioneered the innovations like photo tag, public comments, private chat box, expressive emoticons, and now it provides AI-based chat assistance, marketing platform, enhanced features of social gaming and expressions, personal storyboards and more.

Uber: It started with the apps that connects drivers with customers along with payment facility. It wasn’t much but it helped Uber enter the market. Uber progressed from the most basic to now quite sophisticated, highest earning app that has cab sharing, digital wallet, location tracking and many more evolved capabilities.

Snapchat: Ideated by Evan Spiegel, Bob Murphy and Frank “Reggie” Brown, Snapchat was built around the logic of sharing images and messages that automatically self-destructed 10 seconds after reading. Launched in 2011 only for iOS devices for sending photos, the app received incredible response with 166 million active users by May 2017.

Things to consider before launching an MVP

Before practically presenting the app in any live app store, make sure your app does not impose glitch after installing it. Since there is a tight market competition, mistakes are seldom forgivable and may destroy your start-up dream.

Hence, run an in-depth check on your MVP and troubleshooting to see if it works perfectly. Share its beta version with your nearby users and friends before you hand it to thousands of online strangers. This is vital step towards saving the future business reputation.

Gauge your success and CSAT with the power of Analytics

The very next step after you have finished the entire development operation is to see whether or not the launch of the product is working fine. At this stage, your work gets double as you begin to understand the gradual success of your business idea. To get capture the precise picture of the product performance, it is important for you to integrate data analytics that helps take smart decisions.

Statistics helps you conceive future directions about where to improve and what changes it needs down the line to evoke satisfaction signals from users.

Summarize

MVP is a brilliant mobile app development strategy about user expectations with a minimalist approach without drilling your financial capacity. All you need is to identify your target market, conceive the essential features, and hire the best mobile app development company with right technology and latest insight. Hope this blog has delivered clear understanding of MVP and its benefits for mobile apps.