Problem

To create a trade marketplace platform that attracts buyers and sellers dealing in commodities by offering visibility of the market and an opportunity to negotiate on price.

Why are we solving it?

An online platform can give real-time visibility of the market, a wider reach, and an opportunity to better negotiate price. This marketplace will allow sellers to connect directly with buyers.

Design Process

1. Understand

We tried to understand who the users are, what the business wants to achieve, and how design can help achieve it.

1.1 User Persona

a User Persona (image generated using Midjourney)

There are two types of users- buyer, and seller.

• Potential sellers are cold storage and commodity processors
• from tier 2 cities, particularly known for certain commodities, like Jaipur, Guntur, Indore, Rajkot, etc.
• Potential buyers are similar to the sellers in terms of demographics.
• They lie in the age group of 30-50 years
• With decent tech literacy and the ability to use the most common apps, and some additional apps too.

Current Behaviour

Users are familiar with

• the traditional means of trade, i.e. offline / WhatsApp, phone calls, and
• visiting the warehouse/mandi to get a touch and feel of the product before trading.

Their pain points are

• Discoverability of buyer/seller
• Negotiations on deliverables and costs.
• Quality assessment- Esp. in the virtual way of trading, getting a touch and feel of the product is absent, which is a challenge in assessing the quality.

1.2 Understanding business stakeholders

We interviewed business stakeholders to understand details like-