Kisan Mandi — agri-commerce marketplace
2019 archive — placeholder, refresh in Phase 5. Built a B2B agri-commerce marketplace connecting 3,000+ Indian farmers to wholesale buyers — mobile-first, multi-lingual, offline-capable.
Built for Client 5
The challenge
Kisan Mandi wanted to disintermediate the agricultural supply chain in India — connecting farmers directly to wholesale buyers and eliminating three layers of middlemen who took 40–60% margin. The challenge: their target farmers were operating on 2G connections, had low digital literacy, and primarily spoke Hindi, Marathi, or Punjabi — not English.
Previous attempts by competitors had failed because they built city-first products and retrofitted them for rural use. The UI was too complex, the app too heavy, and listings required a stable internet connection to browse.
How we solved it
We designed mobile-first with a Hindi-default UI and Progressive Web App offline mode — farmers could browse cached listings and queue orders even without a connection. The design system used large touch targets, high-contrast colours for outdoor sunlight, and icon-first navigation to reduce reading load.
The marketplace was built on Next.js Commerce with a custom Postgres backend (not Shopify — product catalog requirements were too agri-specific). Razorpay handled payments. WhatsApp Business API sent order confirmations in the user's preferred language.
The results
Tech stack
Clean design system, accessible by default, and they documented everything. The handover was effortless.