Marketplace development: platforms that connect buyers with sellers or service providers

What makes a marketplace different from a store

A store sells its own goods. A marketplace sells other people's goods or services and takes a share. That one difference adds four problems a store does not have:

1. Two sets of users. Buyers and sellers need different apps or screens, different onboarding and different support.
2. Trust between strangers. Verification of sellers or workers, ratings, dispute handling, and rules for who is liable when something goes wrong.
3. Money that belongs to someone else. The platform collects the payment, keeps its fee, and pays the seller, often only after delivery or completion.
4. The cold start. Buyers will not come without sellers and sellers will not stay without buyers. No software solves this, but software can make it worse if onboarding is slow.

WavX builds marketplace and aggregator platforms, on web and mobile, as part of its custom software work.

Published example: Solve24

Solve24 is a local-services marketplace listed on the WavX work page. It connects customers with verified tradespeople, including plumbers, electricians, carpenters and shops, across more than a dozen Indian cities, with worker profiles, ratings and listings. It is a service marketplace of the Urban Company type, where the thing being matched is a person and a location rather than a parcel.

The cost guide for an app like Urban Company covers that model in more depth. For product marketplaces, the guides to an app like Meesho and, for rentals and stays, an app like Airbnb cover the differences.

Test demand before you build

Most of the risk in a marketplace is whether people will transact, not whether the software works. Before a custom build, consider:

• A marketplace builder. As of October 2026, Sharetribe's Build plan is $39 a month and its Live plan $199 a month billed yearly, with payment processing through Stripe according to its pricing page. A builder will not fit Indian payment and payout needs as well as a custom platform, but it can show whether buyers and sellers turn up.
• A manual pilot. A listing website, a WhatsApp number and a spreadsheet. If you cannot make twenty matches by hand, software will not make two hundred.

Build custom when the rules that make your marketplace different, such as how providers are matched, how prices are set, how quality is checked, are the thing you are selling, or when a builder's fees and limits start to cost more than ownership.

Modules in a typical build

Payments and the rules that shape them

Marketplace payments in India are where scope and cost usually move.

• Split payments. Razorpay Route, according to its documentation, splits incoming payments among linked accounts and lets the platform defer a seller's settlement or set a custom delay. That is how the platform holds a provider's share until a job is marked complete. Razorpay lists eligibility conditions for Route, including turnover thresholds, so whether your business qualifies is checked during scoping.
• GST tax collected at source. Section 52 of the CGST Act requires an electronic commerce operator that collects payment for supplies made by other suppliers to collect tax at source, at a notified rate the Act caps at one per cent, and to pay it within ten days after the end of the month. The platform needs to record seller GSTINs and the net value of supplies to support this. Your chartered accountant decides how it applies to your model.
• Consumer protection. Marketplaces selling to consumers are subject to the Consumer Protection (E-Commerce) Rules, 2020, published by the Department of Consumer Affairs. Ask your lawyer which duties apply to your model under the current text, including any amendments; WavX then builds the seller information, policy pages and complaint-handling features they call for into the scope.

The marketplace app guide covers revenue models: commission, subscription, listing fees and featured placement.

What it costs: a planning range

Worked from the models behind the app cost calculator, which gives a marketplace MVP as its example of a medium app, and the software cost estimator. These are planning ranges for budgeting, not quotes.

Assumptions: standard design, cross-platform app, small scale for the web platform. In-app chat between buyer and seller adds ₹90,000 in the app model. A growing user base multiplies the web figure by 1.3; custom UI design by 1.25. The spread runs 15% below to 25% above the subtotal.

Timeline

Both scopes have subtotals above ₹6,00,000, which the cost model places in its 10 to 16 week band.

1. Rules and flows (weeks 1 to 2). Who can sell, how they are verified, how a match happens, when money moves, what happens on a dispute.
2. Seller side first. Onboarding and the seller panel, so there is supply to show at launch.
3. Buyer side, payments and payouts.
4. Admin, disputes, reports.
5. City or category pilot. Launch in one area or one category, fix what real transactions reveal, then widen.

When not to build one

• You have not made a single match yet. Run a manual pilot first.
• You are really a store with a few suppliers. If you buy and resell, or list a handful of partner brands, a store with a supplier portal is simpler than a marketplace.
• A builder fits and the fees are tolerable. Stay on it until it limits you.