An Australian or NZ founder's afternoon is Jaipur's morning, so both sides are at their desks for a few hours each day. The setup is a matter of using that window on purpose: a short call to brief and answer questions, a review before it closes, and everything else in writing.
How much overlap do you get between Australia, New Zealand and Jaipur?
Jaipur runs on IST, UTC+5:30, and India does not change its clocks. Sydney and Auckland do, so the overlap shifts by an hour twice a year.
The table assumes the Jaipur team starts at 9:30am and shows the first half of their day in your time.
| Jaipur (IST) | Sydney winter (AEST) | Sydney summer (AEDT) | Auckland winter (NZST) | Auckland summer (NZDT) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 9:30am | 2:00pm | 3:00pm | 4:00pm | 5:00pm |
| 11:30am | 4:00pm | 5:00pm | 6:00pm | 7:00pm |
| 1:30pm | 6:00pm | 7:00pm | 8:00pm | 9:00pm |
Sydney gets somewhere between two and a half and three and a half hours inside a normal working day. Auckland gets between one and two, at the end of the day. Perth and Brisbane do not use daylight saving, so check your own city against the table.
How should the daily handoff be structured?
Five fixed points, at the same times every day.
Your morning. The team's end-of-day note arrived while you slept. Read it with coffee and answer every open question in writing, in the same thread, before lunch. The team starts its day with answers waiting.
Start of the overlap. A call of 15 to 20 minutes with the same agenda each day: what shipped, what is blocked, what is next. New work is briefed here, and the written brief has already been sent, so nobody is hearing it for the first time.
The middle. The team builds and you do your own work. Nothing should need you here unless it is a blocker, and blockers should be rare because your morning answers cleared most of them.
End of the overlap. A review of 20 to 30 minutes on whatever is running on staging. Share a screen, click through it, then approve it or send it back with specifics.
End of the Jaipur day. The team posts a written note: what was done, what is next, what is blocked, and any questions, numbered. It reaches you late evening or overnight. You read it in the morning.
What should you decide live in the overlap?
Anything that would take more than two or three message round trips. Across time zones each round trip can cost a full day, because a reply that misses the window waits for the next one.
That covers scope trade-offs, a brief that is unclear, how an edge case should behave, and whether a feature is worth cutting this week. It also covers reviewing working software, which is slower and vaguer in text than on a screen share.
Bring the question with the options already written down. Whether refunds can be partial takes ten minutes. An open question about how payments should work takes the whole call.
What should stay in writing?
Specs and acceptance criteria. Bug reports with steps to reproduce. Anything someone will need to look up in three months.
Decisions made on the call go in writing too. After each call the team posts a short summary in the thread: what was decided and who does what. You confirm it or correct it.
Treat a decision as made once it is in the thread. Before that, you remember one thing, the team remembers another, and you find out at the next review.
What do you do outside the overlap?
Leave it. The end-of-day note lands when you are asleep or out for dinner, and it will keep until morning.
Agree up front what counts as urgent. Production being down, or customers being unable to pay, is a reasonable line. Urgent goes to one named channel with a phone number behind it. Everything else waits for the next window.
The team should not sit idle waiting for you. If they do, the brief was thin, and the fix is a better brief the day before.
How do you set this up in the first week?
Put the two recurring calls in everyone's calendar before any work starts. Set them in your own time zone and check them when your clocks change, since the Jaipur side stays put and the gap moves by an hour.
Agree on one brief template: the goal, who uses it, what done looks like, what is out of scope. Ask for questions in writing before the call, so the call is spent on the hard ones.
Keep one thread per part of the product. Payments questions sit in the payments thread and onboarding questions in onboarding. This matches how DL splits teams, one small team per domain, and it keeps the end-of-day notes short.
Name one person on each side who owns the thread. When everyone is responsible for the notes, nobody posts them.
FAQ
Is the time difference a problem when outsourcing software development from Australia to India?
It gives you a shared window of a few hours, not none. The cost is that a missed reply waits until the next day, so questions that need back and forth go to the call and the rest go in writing.
Do I have to be online late at night?
No. The end-of-day note arrives in your evening or overnight and can wait until morning. Only agreed urgent items, such as production being down, need a faster reply.
Does this work from New Zealand?
Yes, with a shorter window at the end of your working day. Keep the call to 15 minutes, send briefs in writing the day before, and review on a screen share while the window is still open.
How we split work across small domain teams is on the teams page.