🛍️ Vemgram: Building in Public

I am building Vemgram and sharing the entire journey here – progress, decisions, half-baked ideas, and everything in between.

Vemgram is an online platform to connect retailers with manufacturers in India.

Website: vemgram.com

🧱 Build Log

Updates won't be daily as I'm not working on this full-time.

🔸 May 16, 2026

Working on and building some internal tools to make the listing, verification, and other processes easier for admins and moderators.

🔸 April 25, 2026

Added support for custom domains, and it's already live on the website. Shared a sneak-peek in this post on X. Still improving a few things about it, but it's functional already.
Fixed some minor bugs and did some minor UX enhancements in the dashboard. Also, updated H1s and meta titles on /manufacturers/* pages.

🔸 April 22, 2026

The current design was emoji-heavy, but since emojis get rendered differently on different devices, I started using Twemoji so that emojis look the same on all devices.
Planning to implement the custom domain feature. When enabled, users can add and verify a custom domain and their manufacturer profile will start appearing on their own domain. There will be different header, footer, and a few other things though. Also, everything will still be controlled from Vemgram dashboard.

🔸 April 03, 2026

Built the inquiry system where registered retailers/buyers can directly message manufacturers with their questions. Built an email digest system for inquiries as well.

🔸 April 02, 2026

Created a dynamic custom OG image setup for all public pages, the design is not very good yet but it's enough for the first version.
Made the dashboard navigation cleaner and also added a breadcrumb at the top.
Fixed duplicate meta title/description tags in the Blade template, took a while to figure this out and implement the fix.

🔸 March 27, 2026

Almost everything is working as expected, and have started creating some real business profiles on the site.
Working on the hardest problem now, creating the logo. It's been 2 days since I am working on it, and it's still nowhere to be complete.

🔸 March 17, 2026

Implementing social login features with Google, and also thinking about adding Phone/OTP login but not sure yet.
Making the feature of auto-pulling required info from submitted existing website and other profiles more robust.
Fixing some bugs and doing minor enhancements like auto-optimizing gallery images on upload and more.

🔸 March 10, 2026

Working on fixing a bunch of minor UI bugs inside the dashboard and on the public profile pages.
Automatic fetching data from existing websites/profiles is working as expected, still need to make it better.

🔸 March 01, 2026

Adding different details for the public profile takes a lot of time as there are tens of fields, so working on creating a system that asks users to add their existing website or profiles, automatically fetches info, and populates the required fields.

🔸 February 17, 2026

Published the first version live on the website vemgram.com.
Used Dokploy to deploy on a Hetzner VPS, earlier, I was thinking of using Laravel Forge but wasn't aware that's a paid product, and it doesn't make sense to use that at this point of time.
As multiple people told, I am also thinking about changing the name "Vemgram" but only if I find a good alternative. I've spent several hours on it already, but nothing clicks, so far.

🔸 February 16, 2026

Clearing all dummy data from the site, and then getting ready to make the v1 live. Still have a lot of small things to do, but will keep making changes once the site is live.
Hosting this on a Hetzner VPS by using Laravel Forge.

🔸 February 09, 2026

The new design is almost complete with the following pages:
- User's dashboard
- Public manufacturer's profile
- Location pages and other archive pages
- Admin dashboard (to check and approve businesses)
The website still has a lot of dummy data so slowly putting things together for the MVP launch.

🔸 January 27, 2026

The previous design wasn't approved by Bikash, so re-doing the whole design thing from the scratch. We will only keep the light mode on the site, at least for now.

🔸 January 19, 2026

Started working in Laravel, have set up the project, and started working on it
Using SQLite for the project, because why not! And when the project becomes big, it will be a nice problem to have.
Have created the dashboard and now working on the authentication, will keep email and social login (Google, etc.)
Planning to make the basic homepage live in 1-2 days, and will now put a basic lead capture form until the website is completed

🔸 December 24, 2025

Thinking of using the domain vemgram.com that I have from earlier, and have also got the .in that I'll probably redirect to the .com
Finalized Laravel as the framework after researching multiple options (but don't ask me why)

🔸 December 22, 2025

Created a detailed written plan for the app in a Google Docs
Discussed this with Amit, Bikash, Rohit, and a few other people as well
Researched different tech stack options, as I don't want to use Next.js for this (my other Next.js projects have become very complicated in the past)

📦 Parking Lot

Ideas and suggestions I'm considering for some day.

Physical mail verification: Send physical mails to manufacturer addresses for profile verification, similar to how Google AdSense does it in India.

Role switching (community idea): Buyers can post requirements on the app, and verified sellers send quotations — like government tender work.