50% boost in development
70% reduction in tech debt
1M+ satisfied customers
Searching for offshoring that works
Over the last 10 years, My Muscle Chef has grown from a niche startup into a national food giant for the health-conscious. Its development team has been a key part of that growth by ensuring customers can make and adapt their orders based on their fitness needs and food preferences. They needed a cost-effective way to increase their engineering output, while not sacrificing on quality. They needed an offshoring model that worked.
- Location: Sydney, Australia
- Industry: Food and Beverage Services
- Number of employees: 250
- Partnership since: 2023
We had tried outsourcing but it always cost us more time and money to fix than it saved and increased tech debt. The Scalers are completely different. The engineers they found work the exact same as our local ones and they have created our culture there. We finally have a cost-effective way to scale.
Building the team
Can outsourcing work?
Like many Australian companies, My Muscle Chef looked to the Philippines initially for a solution to their engineering challenges. However, traditional outsourcing soon revealed its flaws: poor code quality, miscommunication, and a lack of integration into their own team and processes. This led to a two-tiered approach where the busy Australian team had to juggle their tasks while fixing subpar code and tech debt, with the outsourced team relegated to basic bug fixes. After a similar outcome with another provider in India, the CTO was determined to find something different that actually worked.
A team-building model
The Scalers’ unique model immediately stood out to Nishant Menon, My Muscle Chef’s CTO. First, there was no bench of contracted developers — The Scalers would find the best developers for their specific requirements, which would ensure high quality. Second, the operational model ensured that his engineers in Bangalore would have the same infrastructure as the Australian team. Third, the focus on culture and engagement gave him the reassurance that the engineers hired would stay, which was key to his growth plan.
Selecting from the best
The Scalers have access to a talent pool of over 2 million tech workers in Bangalore and can help engineers relocate from further afield when they are the right fit for a partner. When the process kicked off for My Muscle Chef, The Scalers team did the heavy lifting by putting a high volume of candidates through their 7-step recruitment process of detailed technical and cultural evaluations, before putting two to three high-quality engineers for each role in front of Nishant to interview. Getting to select his own team members this time was a key requirement, and very soon his initial team was ready to start.
Positions hired:
- Senior Fullstack Web Engineer
- Mid Fullstack Web Engineer
Technologies:
- Javascript
- Typescript
- HTML
- ReactJS
- CSS
- NextJS
- NodeJS
- Typescript
- NestJS
- MongoDB
- REST
- GraphQL
- Git
- AWS
Running operations
Ready to code
Before the start date, The Scalers prepared a fully branded and equipped Bangalore office with everything My Muscle Chef needed for a dev centre. Once the first engineers were onboarded, they were quickly integrated into the My Muscle Chef technical environment. This time, the quality of the team meant that within weeks they were contributing to shared git repositories, using the same task management system, and collaborating with their Australian colleagues. Having earned the trust of their new colleagues, the productivity of the engineering team exceeded expectations allowing them to take on larger projects.
Building a team culture
Building an engaging culture really matters to My Muscle Chef in Australia, so naturally they wanted their new Bangalore team to experience this too. Enter the dedicated Chief Happiness Officer (CHO). This unique role engages team members every week to ensure that they are happy and motivated. From organising team building events to setting up training sessions, the CHO role is the eyes and ears on the ground for Nishant and is a big factor in the high retention and low attrition rate that The Scalers are famous for.
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A distributed team working together
Nishant’s ultimate goal was always to have a distributed engineering team working together as one. In their previous efforts, the average quality had made this impossible. However, the difference with The Scalers’ approach was immediate and soon the quality of the work coming from the Bangalore team equalled that of the Australian team. This meant that they could now be assigned work based on skills and not by location, which is what a high-functioning team should be doing. It gave Nishant full control over the team and got them back on track with their roadmap.
Bonus time
Many Australian companies going offshore fear the time zone difference with India. However, it just means a minor readjustment of their internal processes to make it work. With India, there is still at least a half-day crossover which gives more than enough time for stand-ups, meetings, and reviews. Like all of The Scalers’ partners, My Muscle Chef quickly adapted and was soon gaining bonus hours of coding when one location was offline and the other working. These new processes have added significant productivity increases across the team.
Ready to grow
The success of their new Bangalore team means that My Muscle Chef now has a proven development hub that they can rely on as they execute their roadmap. Plans are already underway to scale and expand their engineering team in Bangalore to further leverage The Scalers’ model. Beyond engineering, this strategic base opens the door to explore new opportunities including other roles and functions or even to enter into new markets for their products.
To me, typical offshoring or outsourcing is usually about cost saving and not scaling. I wanted a properly distributed model where we have a true team where I have control over all my engineers and can scale when needed. We now have this in place and it is working very well.
A properly distributed model
After trying typical outsourcing and offshoring models, My Muscle Chef learned the hard way that finding the right approach takes time and must not be driven by cost savings or time zone. In Australia, they focus on quality, operations, and culture, so they applied the same standards offshore. Now, they have a high-performing team that aligns with their culture and matches their Australian team’s development output. The truly distributed model they were always after is working well and can scale as needed.
Long-term wins
Established hub for future expansion
Increased development velocity
Increased agility and focus on customers, not code
