Case Study

Empowering Rural Retailers with a Scalable Wholesale Ordering Platform

Empowering Rural Retailers with a Scalable Wholesale Ordering Platform

Empowering Rural Retailers with a Scalable Wholesale Ordering Platform

Duka Direct is a Kenya-based startup enabling small retail shops in rural Africa to order groceries and essentials in bulk through a digital platform. With features like agent-assisted onboarding, offline-first mobile apps, and streamlined last-mile delivery, Duka Direct is transforming traditional retail supply chains for underserved communities.

Duka Direct is a Kenya-based startup enabling small retail shops in rural Africa to order groceries and essentials in bulk through a digital platform. With features like agent-assisted onboarding, offline-first mobile apps, and streamlined last-mile delivery, Duka Direct is transforming traditional retail supply chains for underserved communities.

Building a wholesale ordering platform for rural Africa meant addressing complex, ground-level realities—unreliable internet connectivity, low digital literacy, and diverse local languages. The platform had to simplify bulk ordering for shopkeepers, support agents in onboarding and managing shops with minimal friction, and ensure last-mile deliveries could adapt in real-time to on-ground constraints like location changes, returns, or failed attempts. All of this needed to work seamlessly—even offline.

The Josh Edge

Leveraging our expertise in offline-first mobile architecture, scalable backend systems, and user-centric design, we delivered a robust wholesale ordering platform tailored to the unique needs of rural African retailers. Here’s what we implemented:

Offline-First Mobile Architecture: Designed customer and agent apps in Flutter to function reliably in low or no connectivity scenarios by caching data locally and syncing seamlessly when online.

Multi-App Ecosystem: Developed a modular system comprising an admin panel (built with Solidus), a customer app for self-service ordering, and an agent app for rapid onboarding, order tracking, and delivery management.

Scalable Backend Deployment: Built a resilient backend using Ruby on Rails with PostgreSQL, Redis, and Sidekiq, deployed on AWS ECS with autoscaling and load balancing to support high performance across regions.

Deliver Real Value

Fast Adoption: Enabled 1M+ Kenyan Shillings worth of monthly orders within the first few months of launch.

Rapid Onboarding: Allowed agents to onboard shops in less than 1 minute using geolocation and 3-tap verification.

Seamless Last-Mile Ops: Reduced delivery friction by enabling real-time updates for doorstep changes and cancellations.

Infrastructure Uptime: Ensured system reliability and scalability with containerized deployment on AWS ECS.

UX for Rural Users: Delivered a localized, intuitive experience with multi-language support and offline capabilities—bridging the digital divide in underserved areas.

E-Commerce

Innovation & Custom Solutions

Enterprise