From Startup to Acquisition: Lessons from Building and Selling an eCommerce Platform

In February 2014 I was twenty-two, halfway through an M.Tech, and convinced I could build a marketplace that would change how local vendors sold online. Three years later the platform was serving eighty-plus vendors, processing real money, and I signed the papers that handed it to someone else. This is the short version of that story, and the seven things it taught me. Small vendors in our region had no affordable way to sell online. Big marketplaces charged steep commissions and buried small sellers.