- Problem
- Indian D2C and Instagram sellers are stuck between cheap DIY builders and Shopify fees: no GST-native invoicing, weak COD, WhatsApp as an afterthought, and no way for an operator to launch many branded stores from one backend.
- Approach
- Built the platform instead of reselling someone else’s. Multi-tenant Postgres with row-level security, a Next.js storefront per tenant, India payments and logistics first, WhatsApp retention wired in.
- Solution
- Hosted storefronts and admin, Razorpay and COD with OTP, GST invoices, Shiprocket and Delhivery, Interakt WhatsApp hooks, visual page builder, Northeast India templates, and a headless API for custom fronts.
- Outcome
- A deployable commerce stack for Siliguri-to-national D2C: signup to branded store without assembling six vendors. Live marketing at aimonk.io.
Key challenges
- True tenant isolation at the database, not just a client_id filter in app code
- COD, UPI and GST as core checkout, not plugins
- Storefront customisation that operators can use without a developer on every edit