In January 2025, we got a call from Ravi at Lokavista Exports. He needed an e-commerce platform — fast. His business had been running on WhatsApp orders and spreadsheets, and he was about to attend an international trade show. He wanted something live before the event.
The deadline was non-negotiable: two weeks from kickoff to launch. Here's how we made it happen.
Architecture decisions
With a 2-week timeline, every decision had to maximize output without sacrificing quality. **Next.js** with App Router gave us SSR for SEO and API routes in one codebase. **MongoDB** meant the product catalog could change frequently without migrations. **Stripe Checkout** handled multi-currency, tax calculation, and fraud protection out of the box — saving at least a week.
Payment integration
Stripe Checkout was the obvious choice. For Indian customers, we added Razorpay as an alternative since UPI and net banking are preferred in India. The integration was straightforward: create a Checkout Session on the server side, redirect to Stripe's hosted page, and listen for the webhook to confirm the order.
Deployment
We deployed on a VPS using Docker + Nginx + PM2 with GitHub Actions for CI/CD. The site went live in two weeks to the day from our first call. Since launch, the platform has handled orders from 4 countries.