We build two-sided marketplaces, delivery, ride and service booking apps for founders in the US, UK and EU. Matching, tracking, payouts and dispute handling are designed for a busy Friday night, not for a demo.
A marketplace is three products sold as one: an app for the customer, an app for the supplier and a control room for you. Cheap quotes price the first and sketch the other two. Then launch day arrives, a driver cancels, a customer wants a refund on a cash order, and nobody knows what the system should do.
appico is an AI-amplified product agency based in India, building for founders in the US, UK and EU. AI compresses our scoping, concepts and front-end work, which is a large part of why an MVP can start from $10,000 and a mobile app from $12,000. Architecture, payments, integrations, security and hardening are done by senior engineers. You pay by milestone, see a staging link by day 3, and hold the source code and every account in your name.
All three sides scoped and built together, because a marketplace fails if any one is an afterthought.
Search, availability, assignment rules and fallbacks for when a supplier declines or goes quiet.
Interval or on-demand location updates, which keep map bills and battery drain lower than continuous streaming.
Commission, tips, cash orders and supplier payouts reconciled, with cash-in-hand deducted before commission is paid out.
Reviews, grievance handling and refund tools for your operations team.
Promo codes, seasonal offers and partner placements shown after the order is placed, not before.
The standards that usually apply in the US, UK and EU. We build to the ones your product needs and tell you plainly which those are.
Card data should stay with a payment provider built for marketplaces, which also handles splitting funds between you and suppliers.
UK and EU card payments usually need two-factor approval, so checkout must handle the extra step without losing the order.
Payment providers verify suppliers before paying them out, so onboarding must collect the right documents.
Marketplaces serving the EU have duties to identify traders and act on illegal listings, and platforms in the UK and EU report seller income to tax authorities.
Customers and suppliers should not see each other's phone numbers, which is why masked calling and in-app messaging are built in.
Cancellation and refund matrix, commission, payout timing and what happens when either side fails to show. This comes before design.
AI-assisted concepts give you a staging link by day 3 covering customer, supplier and admin views.
Senior engineers build dispatch logic, split payments, masked calling, in-app messaging and notifications for every order state.
We push test orders through every path, including cancellations and cash, then launch in a single zone with a 14-day bug-fix window.
Offline mode suits low-network regions. It does not work for orders passing between customer, driver and merchant. If a vendor sells it for delivery, treat that as a red flag.
Refunds need rules by time: free cancellation inside a short window, partial or none after. Without them, support staff improvise and margins leak.
Constant real-time tracking is a large map cost. Updates every 10 seconds or so, or only when the user taps track, do the same job.
Ads in front of a new customer interrupt the one thing they came to do. Orders fall, bounce rises and the reviews say why.
An MVP starts from $10,000 and a mobile app from $12,000. A full marketplace with three apps, payouts and live tracking costs more, and MVPs can range up to around $150,000 depending on depth. We quote a fixed scope. Starting with one city and one service keeps the first version affordable.
Usually because they leave things out: refund logic, cash reconciliation, masked calling, accessibility, multilingual support, the admin panel. The app launches, operations struggle, and store reviews suffer. Users go back to the established app. Our founder's view is blunt: it is better not to make an app than to make a bad one.
Customers usually expect an app for on-demand services. Suppliers need one if they work on the move, as drivers and couriers do. For marketplaces where suppliers work from a desk, a web dashboard is cheaper and enough. We decide per side, so you do not pay for apps nobody needs.
A marketplace payment provider holds the customer's payment, takes your commission and pays the supplier on a schedule you set. The provider verifies each supplier's identity first. For cash orders, the system tracks cash-in-hand and deducts it from the next payout, so commission is correct across prepaid and cash jobs.
Technically, yes: multiple currencies, languages and tax rules can be built in. We will still advise against it for a first launch. Each region needs its own suppliers, marketing and local support. Prove the model in one area, then expand with evidence. The platform is built so that adding regions later is configuration, not a rebuild.
Launching is only the start, so we design for the monthly bill. That means interval tracking over continuous streaming, caching, right-sized hosting and notifications sent through cost-effective channels. Maintenance is a separate monthly plan. Because code and accounts are yours, you see every provider invoice directly.