Ollasoftware
Custom software is mostly boring — and that is the point
Most custom software work is not glamorous. It is a TypeScript codebase that needs a new module. A Postgres schema that needs a migration without locking the table. A Rust binary that needs an observability layer wired in before the next on-call shift. A CI pipeline that needs to stop being a flake machine. This is the work that determines whether a product ships on time. It is also the work that most "innovation labs" and "digital transformation partners" refuse to do because there is no slide deck at the end.
We do that work. We have done it across 40+ brands we own — Crawlcrawl is a Rust API on Tailscale and Cloudflare. Aeoniti is a Rust app on a single VM with Valkey and Postgres. Quick21 is TypeScript on 10.10.10.73 with Firebase auth. 24Observe is open-source observability under MIT. These are not toy projects. They serve real users, take real money, and break in real ways at three in the morning. The same senior bench that maintains them is the bench that ships in your repository.
Headquartered at HSR Layout, Bengaluru — same address as Networkers Home, the institute Vikas Swami has run since 2007. Hours are Monday through Saturday, 10:00 to 18:00 IST. The phone number works: +91-9611027980.
What we build — and the boring stack we prefer
Custom software development covers the application surface: web, mobile, backend, internal tools, integrations, data pipelines, the works. Our default stack is intentionally boring — TypeScript, Rust, Go, Postgres, Cloudflare. We will work in your stack if you have a strong reason (you usually do); we will not migrate you to ours unless you ask. The boring stack is not a brand choice. It is a reliability choice. Postgres has 30 years of production scars. Rust has eliminated the entire class of memory-safety bugs that broke the last generation of network services. TypeScript ships a frontend you can refactor without a rewrite in 18 months.
Where we depart from a typical agency: we write engineering tests as part of the SOW, not as an afterthought. Every sprint ends with a demo on Friday and a written read-out. The CI pipeline is set up in week one and stays green. The deploy is reproducible from a fresh laptop. These are not aspirations — they are the engineering defaults that come from running production systems where we are the customer-support email.
AI software development compounds with this. If the custom-software work needs an AI feature later — a copilot, a retrieval layer, a triage agent — we ship that on the same codebase with the same team. No re-procurement, no second discovery call. Same SOW shape, same senior bench, same Friday demo. Most custom-software shops on this list cannot do that cleanly; they treat AI as a separate practice with a separate handoff.
Pricing — written down before you sign anything
Audit: $24,000 fixed, 2 weeks. A senior engineer reads your codebase, talks to your team, and returns a costed roadmap your board can sign off on. If you do not proceed past the audit, the work is yours. Code-review notes, architecture diagrams, the read-out — all yours.
Sprint: $48,000 and up, 4 to 12 weeks fixed. Working software in your repo by week one. Shipped by the SOW date. Two engineers plus a PM is the typical shape; up to six on larger sprints. 50% on signature, 50% on demo. If we miss the success bar in the SOW, the next change order is on us, not on you.
Retainer: $11,000/month and up, 30-day cancellation. Embedded engineering, ongoing. The exit is clean; the code is yours from day one; the runbook gets handed back when you cancel.
Compare these numbers to the named consultancies below. Most do not publish pricing. The ones that do show ranges between "starts at $50k" and "depends on engagement." Getting an actual number requires a procurement cycle. We send a real SOW within 3 business days of the discovery call.
The founder — why a CCIE runs a custom-software shop
Vikas Swami is dual CCIE #22239 (Routing & Switching, Security). He cleared both labs within 90 days in 2008–09 — among very few engineers worldwide to do so. Background: Cisco TAC VPN team (2004), then Wipro, HP, Mobily. Founded Networkers Home in 2007. The institute has placed 45,000+ alumni at 800+ hiring partners, salary band ₹6–60 LPA, 4.7-star Google rating over 1,173 reviews, 171K YouTube subscribers on the Networkers Home channel.
Why this matters for custom software: the discipline that ships a CCIE-grade VPN is the same discipline that ships a custom-software product reliably. Network engineers learned reliability the hard way — packet loss is not negotiable, latency is measured, mean-time-to-recovery is the metric that matters. That mindset, applied to web and backend engineering, produces software that does not fall over.
Vikas operates 22+ ventures across five categories: seven VPN ventures (QuickZTNA, QuickSDWAN, 21Tunnel, StandVPN, MeshWG, plus two more), six post-quantum cryptography ventures (QSecNiti, QSecNetwork, plus four more), AI and SaaS products (Crawlcrawl, Aeoniti, Quick21, 24Observe, 21Bill which has invoiced ₹500+ crore for 20M+ users), and India-stack initiatives (MailSetu, NamahOS, DNS anycast network in build). Education: Mechanical Engineering with Production and Industrial Management; Executive Program in Innovation, NUS Singapore.
He runs no personal social media — no LinkedIn, no X. As he has stated publicly: *"Not the two CCIE labs… it is the alumni network — over 45,000 engineers placed… many from small towns in India who had no other path."* That is the operating philosophy. The bench at Ollasoftware is built on the same alumni discipline.
Vikas Swami
Founder, Ollasoftware
Dual CCIE #22239 (Routing & Switching, Security) · cleared both within 90 days, 2008–09. Cisco TAC VPN team (2004) · Wipro · HP · Mobily · Networkers Home (founded 2007).
- 45,000+
- alumni placed via Networkers Home
- 800+
- hiring partners
- ₹6–60 LPA
- salary band of placed engineers
- 4.7★
- Google rating (1,173 reviews)
- 171K
- YouTube subscribers
- 22+
- operating ventures
"Not the two CCIE labs… it is the alumni network — over 45,000 engineers placed… many from small towns in India who had no other path." — Vikas Swami
40+ brands in production — proof that we ship, not just consult
The brand portfolio is the evidence. Every product we operate is one we shipped, hardened, deployed, and now maintain in production. Crawlcrawl handles multi-tenant traffic with rate-limited APIs. Aeoniti runs a Rust binary on a single VM behind Cloudflare. Quick21 has Firebase auth and a customer-facing dashboard with no per-tenant data leaks. 24Observe is open-source MIT and the documentation is public. Switchllm, Ollima, Super25.ai, Ollagraph, OllaDNS, Browserfog, Memfog, NAC4AI — every one of these is built, deployed, and operating.
This is the proof that matters for custom-software engagements. A consultancy that has never been the on-call engineer at three in the morning will produce code that does not survive its first outage. We have been on-call across 40+ products. Every architecture default — observability, secret rotation, deploy reproducibility, rollback procedures — comes from being the team that gets paged. When we apply that to your engagement, you are getting 22 ventures' worth of mistakes already made on our money, not yours.
The closest comparison on this list is ThoughtWorks India for engineering practice depth, or Sahaj Software for the senior-only-bench philosophy. Both are defensible alternatives at larger engagement sizes; we will say so on the call if your problem fits their shape better than ours.
Two questions to decide if we are the right fit
Question one: do you want senior engineers in your repository within 14 days of the intro call, or are you running a multi-quarter procurement process that ends in a partnership announcement? If the second, ThoughtWorks India and the listed consultancies are built for that shape. If the first, start a 30-minute call — no SDR, no qualification form, a senior engineer who would actually work on your code.
Question two: do you want a fixed price written down before the code starts, or a time-and-materials retainer that can flex as discovery uncovers complexity? If T&M is fine, several names below run that mode well. If you want the number on the SOW to be the number on the invoice, our audit-then-sprint shape is built for that.
If both answers point to us, email [email protected] or call +91-9611027980 during HSR Layout hours. The response window is four business hours during the IST business day.