Case Study
Online Planet
A 3-tier multi-vendor marketplace with dedicated seller, customer, and admin dashboards — featuring Razorpay split-payments, Shiprocket shipping automation, and seller subscription management. 50+ sellers onboarded in the first week.
Local merchants wanted to sell online but had no platform
Online Planet was born from a clear necessity: local merchants in India wanted to sell online but lacked the technical resources and platform to do so. They had products, customers, and business relationships — but no way to take their commerce digital without depending on Amazon or Flipkart's terms and commissions.
The vision was to build a complete marketplace operating system — not just a storefront, but the entire infrastructure that lets sellers onboard themselves, customers buy from multiple vendors in one cart, and administrators govern the platform with full visibility into orders, payments, and seller activity.
This wasn't a Shopify theme or a WooCommerce plugin. It required engineering three complete dashboards, integrating split-payment processing across multiple sellers, automating shipping with carrier APIs, and building a subscription system that would become the platform's revenue model.
Goals
- Build a complete multi-vendor marketplace with 3 user types (seller, customer, admin)
- Enable sellers to onboard, manage products, and track orders independently
- Implement split-payment processing across multiple sellers per order
- Automate shipping with Shiprocket and Ekart carrier integrations
- Create a seller subscription system for platform monetization
Constraints
- Non-technical sellers need intuitive dashboards — onboarding must take minutes, not days
- Split payments must route automatically to correct seller accounts
- Shipping must work across multiple carriers without manual intervention
- Admin must have full governance over sellers, orders, and platform operations
First-week marketplace metrics
Measured during the first 7 days after marketplace launch.
What we built and why
Seller Activation Flow
Admin activates a seller → system generates temporary password and approval email → seller logs in and is forced to change password → OTP verification secures first access → seller enters full dashboard with product, order, and subscription controls. Designed so onboarding doesn't depend on manual admin intervention beyond the initial approval.
Unified Checkout with Split Payments
Customer adds items from multiple sellers to one cart. At checkout, Razorpay creates a split-payment order that automatically routes the correct amount to each seller's bank account. Platform commission is deducted before routing. The customer sees one payment; behind it, the system handles multi-seller financial reconciliation.
Shipping & Fulfillment Automation
After order confirmation, the system automatically creates shipments via Shiprocket or Ekart — serviceability check, label generation, manifest creation, and tracking ID assignment happen without seller intervention. Tracking updates flow back to the customer through WhatsApp, SMS, and email.
Seller Subscription System
Sellers subscribe to plans that control listing limits, commission rates, and feature access. Plan upgrades use webhook-based payment verification for instant activation. This gives Online Planet a repeatable revenue model — not just transaction fees, but predictable subscription income.
Platform interfaces
Why we chose each tool
Next.js 15
Server-rendered product pages for SEO, API routes for payment webhooks and shipping integration, and static generation for marketing pages — all in one framework serving three user types.
MongoDB + Mongoose
Multi-vendor marketplaces have deeply nested data relationships — products belong to sellers, orders span multiple sellers, subscriptions control seller access. Document databases handle this naturally.
Razorpay Split Payments
When a customer buys from multiple sellers in one cart, the payment needs to be split automatically. Razorpay's linked account system routes the correct amount to each seller's bank account.
Shiprocket + Ekart
Automated shipping manifest creation, label generation, and tracking. Sellers don't need to manually create shipments — the system handles it after order confirmation.
WhatsApp + SMS + Email
Triple-channel notifications ensure no order update is missed. Order confirmations, shipping updates, and delivery notifications go through all three channels.
JWT + bcryptjs
Three separate auth contexts (seller, customer, admin) each with different permissions. JWT tokens with role-based claims control access to dashboards and API endpoints.
8-week marketplace build
Ecosystem Strategy
Weeks 1–2
Architected the 3-tier ecosystem (Admin, Seller, Customer), defined data models for multi-vendor relationships, and mapped the seller onboarding and payment flows.
Backend & Database
Weeks 3–4
Built MongoDB schemas for inventory, order routing, subscription management, and multi-seller cart logic. Integrated Razorpay split-payment APIs.
Dashboards & Storefront
Weeks 5–6
Developed three complete interfaces — consumer storefront with multi-vendor browsing, seller dashboard with product/order management, and admin panel with governance controls.
Integrations & Launch
Weeks 7–8
Connected Shiprocket/Ekart for shipping automation, built notification stack (WhatsApp, SMS, email), ran load testing, and deployed to production.
Problems we solved
Multi-Seller Cart Reconciliation
When a customer adds items from 3 sellers to one cart, the checkout needs to: calculate shipping per seller, apply seller-specific discounts, create a split-payment order, and generate separate order records for each seller — all from a single customer action.
Solution: Cart items are grouped by seller at checkout. Each group gets its own shipping calculation, discount application, and order record. Razorpay's linked account system handles the financial split. The customer pays once; the backend creates N seller orders from 1 customer transaction.
Seller Onboarding Without Technical Support
Most sellers are local merchants with limited technical skills. A complex onboarding flow with manual setup steps would create a support bottleneck and limit platform growth.
Solution: The entire flow is automated: admin clicks "activate," system handles password generation, email delivery, forced password change, and OTP verification. The seller dashboard is designed for non-technical users — drag-drop image uploads, simple pricing forms, and clear order status indicators. 50+ sellers onboarded in the first week with zero technical support tickets.
"Our local vendors had the products, but not the platform. The team didn't just build a website; they built a digital economy for our area. The seller dashboard is so intuitive that onboarding took minutes instead of days. It completely transformed our business model.
Questions about this project
How does the seller onboarding flow work?+
How do split payments work when customers buy from multiple sellers?+
What happens after a customer places an order?+
How does the seller subscription system work?+
Can you build a similar multi-vendor marketplace for us?+
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Want to build a multi-vendor marketplace?
We engineer complete marketplace ecosystems — seller dashboards, payment splits, shipping automation.