SaaS does not fit your operation
Off the shelf tools have a workflow. Your business has a workflow. When they do not match, your team spends the day working around the software.
Custom Software Development
Custom software that grows with your business.
For growing businesses without an internal software development team. We build production web, mobile, and platform software with AI built in where it makes work faster, engineered so your operations and non technical team can maintain it without developer help.
11Countries
AWSPartner
4.8Clutch
5.0Google
The problem
Why software projects stall out.
No code hits a ceiling as you scale
At 10 users it worked. At 500, queries slow, integrations break, and vendor pricing balloons. The rebuild costs more than starting right would have.
Service agencies ship features, not products
Most dev agencies and freelancers finish the scope and move on. Six months later documentation is missing, the code is fragile, every new feature is a rewrite. KUMO works as product engineers first. What we ship keeps working, keeps growing.
Software without AI is dated the day it ships
Every user flow can be faster with AI. Every internal workflow can automate the boring parts. Software shipped in 2026 without AI built in is already legacy.
Signs it's time
Signs your business is ready to build custom.
You don't need to check all of these. Any one of these is usually enough to start a conversation about what custom software could do for you.
Your team keeps doing manual work your software should be doing.
Copying data between tools. Retyping the same information three times. Exporting to Excel to fix it. Custom software does that work automatically, so your team gets those hours back.
You have asked your SaaS vendor for a feature and been told "not on the roadmap".
Every time Salesforce, HubSpot, Zoho, or your booking software cannot do something your team needs, that is a real business capability going unused. Custom software builds exactly what you need, when you need it.
You are paying for 5 SaaS tools that do not talk to each other.
Your CRM, your inventory tool, your accounting, your booking, your marketing platform. Every day someone on your team is moving data between them. One custom system that connects everything is cheaper monthly and fits how you actually work.
You have outgrown your no code MVP.
Performance is dropping, integrations are breaking, monthly costs are climbing as you add users. You are ready for the next stage: production software that scales with you instead of holding you back.
You want AI in your operation, but no vendor has added it yet.
You do not need to wait for Zoho or QuickBooks to ship the right AI feature. Custom software lets you add AI where it matters most in your business: the workflows only your team knows about.
You do things differently from your competitors, and that is why you win.
Your way of serving customers, running operations, and processing orders is what makes your business stand out. Custom software supports that. Off the shelf software forces you to work like everyone else.
Recognise one? That's the moment. Let's have a 30 min conversation.
Who we build for
Businesses we've built software for.
Growing businesses across industries. If any of these sound like yours, we've likely built something similar.
Ecommerce and D2C
Beyond Shopify or WooCommerce limits.
Retail and multi store
Inventory, POS, and ops across locations.
Healthcare and clinics
Patient flows, appointments, and records.
Real estate and property
Listings, transactions, and owner portals.
Financial services
Lending, wealth, remittance, non tech finance.
Logistics and supply chain
Tracking, dispatch, warehousing.
Travel and hospitality
Booking, ops, guest experience.
Professional services
Agencies, consultancies, and firms.
Not on the list? We build across sectors. Every project starts with your business, not our template.
Investment
What custom software with KUMO costs.
Three ways to work with KUMO. Every engagement starts with a Starter Build: real production code, not a discovery deck.
Starter Build
$20K to $50K
Your first engagement with KUMO. Whether you're a founder building a new B2B or B2C product from scratch, or an established team fixing one specific workflow, we ship a working custom system end to end. You see how we work, we understand your business, and the output is real code you own, in production, doing a real job.
Typical timeline: 4 to 16 weeks. Right for a new product built 0 to 1, a first internal tool, a targeted automation, or replacing a workflow that slows your team down.
Grow Build
$50K to $100K
For growing businesses ready to scale. Full production build across multiple workflows, with integrations, admin, and the operational scaffolding your business will need at 10 times today's volume.
Typical timeline: 16 to 24 weeks. Fits marketplaces, customer portals, custom platforms, and AI powered workflows across the business.
Support & Growth Team
$5K to $10K / month
Ongoing engineering team on retainer. Bug fixes, feature velocity, AI updates, monitoring, and quarterly architecture reviews. KUMO effectively becomes your part time engineering department.
For businesses after their Starter or Grow Build who want us to keep shipping. Comes with product help and support. Cancel anytime with 30 days notice.
Every engagement starts with a Starter Build. It's how we prove fit, and how you get real value from day one, not a diagnostic deck.
What's included
What every KUMO engagement includes.
Regardless of tier, every custom build ships with the same standards. These are non negotiable at KUMO.
Discovery first
We understand your business, workflows, and users before writing any code. No black box quotes.
Senior engineers throughout
The engineers who scope the project are the engineers who ship the code. Zero junior handoff.
AI opportunities identified
Every workflow gets reviewed for where AI can save time or add capability. Then we build it in.
Full IP transfer
Source code, deploy configs, documentation. All yours from day one, in your GitHub organisation.
Documentation and handover
So your team, or the next partner, can extend what we built. No lock in to KUMO.
Production ready output
Monitoring, tests, rollback, observability. Ready for real users, not just a demo.
Timeline
How long custom software takes.
A Starter Build ships in 4 to 16 weeks. A Grow Build follows the six phase timeline below.
Scope and Discovery
Stakeholder interviews. Workflow mapping. Architecture calls with your team. Together we lock the scope, milestones, and payment plan for the whole engagement.
Data and Architecture
Compliance review. Pipeline design. Stack selection. First working software components come together. Weekly progress calls start here and continue through the whole build.
Build. Sprint 1 and 2
Core workflows go live. Backend and frontend integrate. AI workflows wired in. Each sprint closes with a working demo, sign off from your side, and a payment milestone released.
Build. Sprint 3 and 4
Integrations, admin panels, edge cases. UAT with your team. Same sprint rhythm as before: working demo, your sign off, milestone released, next sprint begins.
Deploy
Production launch. Monitoring wired. Team training so your operations and non technical team is comfortable running the system before we step back.
How we work with you the whole way through.
- Milestone based payments. You pay as we ship, tied to sprint sign off. Never for time not delivered.
- Weekly progress calls. No black box weeks. You know what is happening every sprint, always.
- Sprint sign off from your side. Nothing moves to the next sprint without your review and approval of what shipped in the last one.
- Working software every sprint. You see real progress you can use and give feedback on throughout the engagement, not one big reveal.
- Starter Build (4 to 16 weeks). A compressed version of this timeline focused on one specific workflow. Where most KUMO engagements start.
- Grow Build (16 to 24 weeks). The full six phase timeline above. Standard for multi workflow production systems.
- Longer than 24 weeks? Multi region, regulated, or heavy AI scope. We split it into phases and scope each live with you.
Why KUMO
Engineering discipline you can hand off.
Most agencies ship the scope and move on. We build software your operations and non technical team can run for years, with AI built in where it makes the work faster. Product engineering first, service mindset never.
- Senior engineers who have shipped fintech, SaaS, and marketplace software at production scale.
- Product engineering first: what we build keeps working and keeps growing after we hand it over.
- Full IP transfer and documentation, so your operations and non technical team can run it without developer help.
- AI built in where it makes work faster, on top of engineering that stands for years.
Selected work
Software we've shipped.
Three custom builds where the software was the business, not a side project.
Volopay
YC S20 fintech. First production version. 6 countries. Raised $30M after our build.
Read →CampaignHQ
Cloud native customer engagement platform we built, run, and operate. Live on G2 and Capterra. AWS Partner.
Read →Equipp (Ralco Group)
Rental marketplace for a 25 year IT hardware leader. B2B and B2C. Payments, inventory, admin.
Read →If you specifically need web or mobile product work, see our web & mobile development page.
How we deliver
The KUMO Method.
Six phases. Milestone based, senior engineers from start to delivery. The same method behind every KUMO build.
012-3 weeks
Scope & Discovery
Stakeholder interviews, workflow mapping, use-case prioritisation against business KPIs. Data quality validation. Risk register.
022-3 weeks
Data Audit & Architecture
Data inventory across CRMs, ERPs, databases, and documents. Compliance review. Pipeline and ETL design. Model architecture decisions: RAG, fine-tune, or hybrid.
033-4 weeks
Prototype & Evaluation
Rapid prototype with production APIs. Eval frameworks for accuracy, latency, cost-per-task. Stakeholder UAT. Honest go/no-go review.
044-6 weeks
Production Build & Integration
Production engineering. Observability and tracing. Human-in-the-loop checkpoints. Versioning and rollback. Integration with your existing systems.
051-2 weeks
Deployment & Monitoring
Phased rollout with control groups. KPI dashboards. Drift and latency alerts. Team training. Operational runbook handed over.
06Ongoing
Optimisation & Governance
Iterative tuning. Governance review. Continuous evals. Upgrade planning as new versions ship.
Common questions
Questions buyers ask before choosing custom.
What is custom software development? +
Custom software development is building an application shaped around a specific business's workflow, users, and data, instead of adapting an off the shelf SaaS product. It costs more upfront but scales past vendor limits, gives you full IP, and fits how you actually work.
When should we build custom software instead of buying SaaS? +
When your workflow has rules SaaS vendors do not support, when your data model is a competitive asset, or when you are spending 15 or more hours a week working around your current tool. If SaaS solves 80% of the problem cleanly, buy SaaS.
How much does custom software development cost in 2026? +
Typical range at KUMO is $20K to $50K for a Starter Build (real production code, not a diagnostic), $50K to $100K for a Grow Build across multiple workflows, and $5K to $10K per month for the Support and Growth Team retainer.
What do you mean by "Starter Build"? +
Your first engagement with KUMO is always a real build, not a diagnostic deck. We pick one specific workflow in your business, scope it end to end, and ship it as production code you own in 4 to 16 weeks. You see how we work, we understand your business, you get real value from day one.
Who owns the code and IP after the project? +
You do. Full transfer from day one: source code, infrastructure as code, docs, deploy configs. No license locked components. No back doors. Repos are in your GitHub organisation from day one.
What if we want to bring the work in house later? +
Straight handover. Your team gets the repos, runbooks, docs, and a 2 week overlap where our engineers are on Slack answering questions. Most clients do this at month 6 to 9 post launch.
How does the Support and Growth Team retainer work? +
Optional monthly engagement, $5K to $10K depending on team size and volume. Covers bug fixes, feature velocity, AI updates, monitoring, performance work, and quarterly architecture reviews. Comes with product help and support so you can keep shipping without hiring internal engineers. Cancel anytime with 30 days notice.
What tech stack do you use for custom software? +
Stack pragmatic. TypeScript, Python, and Go as defaults. React, Next.js, Astro, React Native on the client. Postgres, Redis, and managed cloud on the server. We pick based on your team, your future maintenance plan, and the workload, not our preferences.
Where is KUMO based, and can you work in our time zone? +
Global team operating from Bengaluru, India, with active engagements across the US, UK, EU, and the Middle East. We align 4 or more hours of overlap with your team's core working hours.
Ready to build?
30 minutes, no pitch deck. You describe the software, we talk you through fit, rough scope, and roughly what it costs.