Listings visible after subscription lapses
Central subscription eligibility checks injected into all public search and catalog queries.
Case study
Deskon
Local Business Discovery Platform
deskon.in
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Overview
Architected Deskon — a subscription-gated local business platform with a NestJS API, dual Next.js apps for discovery and operations, PostgreSQL, Redis caching and background queues, cloud media storage, and a listing eligibility engine with profile scoring, government verification workflows, and city-scoped role-based access.
Problem & goal
The Challenge
Local consumers struggle to discover verified nearby businesses with comparable services and products. Shop owners need a single portal to publish listings, manage catalogs, handle enquiries, and stay visible only while subscribed — without building separate websites or ad-hoc directories.
Deskon operates a three-sided marketplace: consumers browse, search, compare, and enquire; shop owners manage businesses, services, products, verifications, and subscriptions; platform admins and field operations staff govern catalog quality, plans, and city-scoped access.
Target users
Who It's For
Consumers — search and browse by location or category, compare products, save favourites, submit enquiries, and leave reviews
Shop owners — business profiles, media, services and products, verifications, analytics, and call-to-action tracking
Admins — user management, plans, subscriptions, verifications, roles and permissions, and platform analytics
Managers and staff — city- or allocation-scoped oversight of shop owners and listings
Core capabilities
Platform Modules
Auth & access control
Secure login with Google OAuth, role-based permissions, and granular access for admins, managers, staff, and shop owners.
Business profiles
Rich business listings with media, scoring, status workflows, and owner-managed catalog content.
Catalog
Services, products, brands, and hierarchical categories with side-by-side product comparison.
Discovery
Search with geo and category filters, backed by database queries and in-memory caching for repeat lookups.
Subscriptions
Plan management and active-subscription gating so only paying businesses appear in the public catalog.
Verifications
GST, MSME, and FSSAI verification workflow with admin review and background processing.
Enquiries & reviews
Lead capture for consumers, review moderation, and owner-facing enquiry management.
Analytics & notifications
Event tracking, call-to-action click analytics, business dashboards, and multi-channel notifications via email, SMS, and push.
Allocations
City-scoped manager access and staff-to-shop-owner mapping for regional operations.
Control panel
Dedicated admin console for platform operations, separate from the customer-facing discovery app.
High-level design
System Architecture
The platform ships as three deployable applications sharing one backend contract: a Next.js customer app for public discovery and shop-owner portals, a Next.js control panel for admin and field operations, and a NestJS API on a high-performance HTTP adapter handling versioned REST endpoints, validation, and role guards. PostgreSQL stores relational business data with TypeORM. Redis powers search caching and background job queues for email and verification processing.
External integrations include object storage for photos and videos, transactional email, Firebase push notifications, and SMS delivery. Subscription-gated listing rules and contact privacy for anonymous users are enforced server-side on every public query. Role-based admin controls and encrypted credential storage protect sensitive operations.
Production stack
Technology Stack
Frontend
- Next.js
- React.js
- TypeScript
- Tailwind CSS
- Radix UI
Backend
- NestJS
- Fastify
- TypeORM
- Swagger
Data & messaging
- PostgreSQL
- Redis
Infrastructure
- Docker
- Nginx
- DigitalOcean
- Firebase
Find businesses locally
Discovery & Search
Consumers filter by query text, city, geo radius, category, and rating. Search runs against PostgreSQL with subscription eligibility applied on every public result so expired listings never surface. Identical filter combinations are served from an in-memory cache with versioned namespaces for safe invalidation when listing rules change. Contact details such as phone numbers, messaging links, and coordinates are withheld from anonymous users until they authenticate.
Trust and visibility
Listing Quality
Profile scoring
Weighted scoring across profile completeness, verification status, reviews, and recent activity to surface higher-quality listings.
Subscription gate
A single eligibility rule reused across businesses, services, and products ensures only active subscribers appear in consumer search.
Product comparison
Side-by-side property matrices let consumers compare products before submitting an enquiry.
Session-aware analytics
View and search events tracked with throttling to power business dashboards without duplicate noise.
City-scoped access
Multi-Role Operations
Admins have full platform access. Managers see shop owners and listings only in their assigned cities. Staff support explicitly allocated shop owners without visibility into national data. Shop owners manage their own businesses. Consumers and anonymous visitors see the public catalog with contact privacy applied. Regional managers can approve verifications and monitor listings within their territory without exposing data from other cities.
External services
Integrations
Object storage
Cloud object storage with optional CDN delivery for business photos and video uploads.
Transactional email queued through background workers for verification, subscription, and enquiry events.
Push notifications
Firebase-powered mobile push for time-sensitive owner and admin alerts.
SMS
Configurable SMS delivery for key notification events alongside email and push.
Challenges solved
Engineering Highlights
Contact scraping by anonymous users
Server-side contact masking on public API responses until the user authenticates.
Heavy search load on the database
In-memory cache keyed by filter parameters with versioned namespaces for safe rule updates.
Multi-city ops without data leaks
City-scoped allocations so managers and staff only see businesses in their assigned regions.
Large photo and video uploads
High-throughput multipart handling with cloud object storage offloading media from app servers.
Verification processing latency
Background job queues and scheduled renewal checks for GST, MSME, and FSSAI workflows.
Inconsistent listing quality
Weighted profile scoring that incentivizes complete profiles, verifications, and active engagement.
Built for production load
Performance & Scale
In-memory search cache avoids repeated heavy database joins for identical filters
Cache namespace versioning enables safe invalidation when listing rules change
Pagination on admin lists, search results, and enquiries
Analytics view throttling reduces duplicate tracking events per session
Background workers scale email and verification jobs independently of the API
Stateless API supports horizontal scaling behind a reverse proxy
Selective relation loading keeps detail pages efficient
Operations
Deployment
The production stack runs in Docker containers — database, cache, API, customer app, control panel, and reverse proxy — with automated TLS certificates. Scheduled database backups and structured log rotation support ongoing operations. Health checks on core services ensure reliable uptime for the discovery platform.
Roadmap
What's Next
Self-serve subscription payments and auto-renew
Live government API integration for GST, MSME, and FSSAI verification
Campaigns backend for featured placement and promotional budgets
Advanced search engine if catalog scale outgrows database full-text search
WhatsApp enquiry notifications for shop owners
Consumer mobile app consuming the same versioned API