Marketing site, buyer portal, vendor dashboard, admin panel, buyer app and rider app — six connected products sharing one backend, with M-Pesa payments live.
The challenge
Vedrastores wanted to launch a multi-vendor marketplace in Kenya: independent sellers list and manage their own stock, buyers order on the web or a phone, riders deliver, and the business collects payment through M-Pesa — the way most Kenyans pay. They didn't need a storefront. They needed the entire operating system for a marketplace, delivered by one accountable person, fast.
My role
Sole developer — architecture, backend, web, mobile and deployment
The approach
Designed one shared backend and data model so every platform — buyer, vendor, rider and admin — sees the same order in real time.
Built the buyer portal and marketing site in Next.js for speed and search visibility, with the M-Pesa (Safaricom Daraja) checkout flow end-to-end.
Gave vendors their own dashboard for products, live inventory, orders and payout tracking, so the marketplace scales without the admin team doing data entry.
Shipped the buyer and rider apps from a single React Native/Expo codebase, with real-time order status from checkout to doorstep.
Used Firebase for real-time data and AWS S3 with CloudFront for fast image delivery across the region.
Key engineering decisions
The decisions that made the difference — each one a trade-off chosen on purpose.
What shipped
Product listings, real-time inventory, sales analytics and payouts.
vendor.vedrastores.co.keMarketplace control: vendors, orders, riders, payouts and content.
Android & iOS shopping app built with React Native and Expo.
Delivery assignment and live status updates for riders.
Screens
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