Vendra
Multi-Tenant SaaS E-Commerce for Nigerian Vendors
Key Technical Highlights
Subdomain-per-vendor routing — {slug}.vendra.com gives each vendor a fully isolated storefront with their own domain, branding, and product catalogue
Paystack subaccount splitting — payments go directly to vendor subaccounts at transaction time; platform fee deducted at source with no manual settlement process
Turborepo monorepo with pnpm workspaces — shared TypeScript types and utilities between Next.js frontend and NestJS API, zero drift between client and server contracts
FastAPI microservice handles AI features — generating product descriptions and marketing copy from vendor photo uploads using vision models
BullMQ job queues for all async operations: order notifications, analytics rollups, AI generation jobs, and scheduled marketing nudges to vendors
The Case Study
The Problem
Millions of Nigerian small business owners run their entire sales operation through WhatsApp Status. No storefront. No inventory. No payment tracking. No analytics. Just photos posted to a 24-hour disappearing feed with no discoverability, no cart, and no professional presence.
The Solution
Vendra gives every vendor a proper storefront at their own subdomain (slug.vendra.com) with a full product catalogue, cart, Paystack-native checkout, and a vendor dashboard with analytics — set up in minutes, no technical knowledge required.
Architecture
The platform is a Turborepo monorepo with pnpm workspaces. The Next.js storefront and NestJS API share TypeScript types and utility packages, ensuring zero drift between what the client expects and what the server returns. A FastAPI microservice handles AI features — accepting vendor photo uploads and returning marketing copy via vision model inference.
Payments
Paystack subaccount splitting is central to the business model. Each vendor is onboarded as a Paystack subaccount. When a customer checks out, the full amount is charged, the platform fee is deducted at source by Paystack's split payment system, and the remainder goes directly to the vendor's account. No manual settlements, no escrow delays.
Current Status
Core storefront, vendor dashboard, and payment flows are complete. AI marketing tools and advanced analytics are in active development.