A home-delivery system shipped in one month — first in market
When the pandemic hit, physical shops shut. There was no home-delivery infrastructure ready. In one month — the first in the market — we shipped a working home-delivery system: web, mobile apps, and a driver app.
- 1 month
- Elvin Sharifov + a compressed sprint team
- Product design · Engineering · Mobile app
- Live
Starting point
March 2020 — the pandemic was declared, physical shops shut. The retailer was facing a question they'd never had to answer: shop is closed, customer is at home, who takes the order and who delivers it? Nothing in the local market was ready to plug in.
The ask had urgency: one month, full functionality, three platforms (web + customer mobile + driver). "We'll fix it later" wasn't on the table — it had to work from day one.
Decisions
- Integrate with the existing shop inventory — there was no time to build a fresh catalogue; we worked from what was there.
- Separate driver app — order intake, navigation, status updates, payment confirmation all live on the driver's side. The dispatch panel routes orders to them.
- Online payment only — cash handling was person-to-person risk in a pandemic. Card or mobile payment only.
- Stripped-back customer app — category, order, pay, status. Nice-to-haves got pushed to v2.
Execution
Stack: Laravel backend, Vue.js for the customer web, React Native for the customer mobile and driver apps. Real-time status via push notifications. Payment through a local card processor.
“A one-month sprint — literally seven days a week, weird hours. But when speed actually matters, it matters; the company being open meant food reaching people.”
Result
- From MVP to live in one month — first home-delivery system in the market.
- Physical shops stayed closed during the lockdown, but operations never stopped.
- Driver app + customer app + dispatch dashboard — three platforms, one backend.
- Post-pandemic, the system stayed on as a permanent delivery channel.