KarobarEasy: Building a B2B Marketplace for Pakistan’s Mobile Trade

Pakistan’s mobile-accessory wholesale trade often runs through messaging groups, phone calls, paper ledgers and payment screenshots. That process can move stock, but it creates no shared catalogue, consistent product taxonomy or dependable order history.

The product challenge was larger than putting a storefront online. The same accessory may appear under several names, photos are frequently reused, pricing differs by buyer tier, and each order may involve a vendor, retail buyer, supplier, delivery partner and platform administrator.

The replacement therefore had to feel faster than sending a message, work comfortably on lower-cost Android devices and give every participant access only to the data and actions relevant to their role.

Core constraints

• No canonical SKU catalogue for a fragmented product category.
• Different pricing and visibility rules for vendors, buyers and suppliers.
• Manual payment and order reconciliation across several channels.
• Mobile connectivity and device limitations outside ideal test conditions.
• A need for moderation without turning every listing into an operations bottleneck.

DevKeyTech designed KarobarEasy as a phased marketplace rather than one oversized launch. The first phase established the web platform, vendor onboarding, moderated catalogue, buyer storefront, order workflow and admin back office. This let the team stabilise the data model and operating rules before expanding the product surface.

The second phase added a React Native buyer app built around product discovery, order milestones and repeat purchasing. Offline-aware browsing and explicit sync states were included because the platform must remain understandable when a connection is slow or interrupted.

The third phase separated suppliers into their own portal. That decision kept vendor and supplier workflows focused while allowing the database permission model to enforce clear boundaries between buyers, vendors, suppliers and administrators.

What the platform includes

• Vendor workspace: catalogue submissions, inventory, pricing tiers, orders and moderation status.
• Buyer web and mobile experience: search, filters, vendor comparison, multi-vendor cart, tracking and reorder flows.
• Supplier portal: wholesale catalogues, invoice records and controlled downstream visibility.
• Admin console: verification, catalogue moderation, disputes, configuration and audit history.
• Structured order workflow: quote, confirmation, packing, dispatch, delivery and settlement states.
• Catalogue controls: attribute normalisation, image review and a curator queue for duplicate or inconsistent SKUs.

Engineering approach

Next.js and TypeScript support the web product, while React Native and Expo serve the buyer app. Supabase provides PostgreSQL, authentication, storage and row-level security. The architecture keeps business rules close to a relational data model and makes permissions explicit instead of relying only on hidden interface controls.

The team deliberately kept search on PostgreSQL full-text and trigram capabilities during the current stage. A specialised search platform can be introduced later if catalogue scale and measured search behaviour justify the operational cost.

KarobarEasy now has a shared product and order system spanning web, mobile and supplier workflows. The strongest confirmed outcome today is operational: the platform replaces disconnected catalogue, order and settlement records with structured states and role-based access.

Commercial and time-saving outcomes are still being measured. Median confirmation time, reconciliation hours, repeat-order rate and weekly vendor-onboarding capacity remain marked TBD until they can be verified from production analytics and an approved client review.

What the team learned

Catalogue normalisation should begin earlier than marketplace interface work. A small, opinionated starting taxonomy is easier to grow than an open catalogue that must be cleaned after suppliers upload inconsistent data.

The project also reinforced that messaging is not simply a competitor to a marketplace. Buyers may still want to speak with a vendor at the moment of purchase. The better design is to keep those conversations connected to structured order context instead of pretending they will disappear.

For businesses facing a similar catalogue and ordering problem, DevKeyTech’s web development and mobile app development teams can help map the smallest useful first phase. The right first step is a workflow and data audit—not a feature list.