🔸 Aug 03, 2026
- Everything is running smoothly, and a few users are joining organically.
🛍️ 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.
🔸 Apr 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.
🔸 Apr 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.
🔸 Apr 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.
🔸 Apr 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.
🔸 Mar 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.
🔸 Mar 17, 2026
- Implementing social login features with Google, and also thinking about adding Phone/OTP login but not sure yet.
- I am making the feature that automatically pulls required information from a submitted website and other profiles more robust.
- Fixing some bugs and doing minor enhancements like auto-optimizing gallery images on upload and more.
🔸 Mar 10, 2026
- Working on fixing a bunch of minor UI bugs inside the dashboard and on the public profile pages.
- Automatic fetching of data from existing websites/profiles is working as expected, but I still need to improve it.
🔸 Mar 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.
🔸 Feb 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 several people have told me, 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.
🔸 Feb 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.
🔸 Feb 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.
🔸 Jan 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.
🔸 Jan 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
🔸 Dec 24, 2025
- Thinking of using the domain
vemgram.comthat I have from earlier, and have also got the.inthat I'll probably redirect to the.com - Finalized Laravel as the framework after researching multiple options (but don't ask me why)
🔸 Dec 22, 2025
📦 Parking lot
Ideas and suggestions I'm considering for someday.
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.