AroundYou: A Location-Based E Commerce Platform for Real-Time Consumer-Business Interactions

Abstract

AroundYou is a hyperlocal marketplace platform designed to connect consumers with nearby shops, service providers and rental businesses through real time and location aware interactions. The system addresses the common challenges faced by local vendors such as low digital visibility and inconsistent customer reach, while also helping consumers access nearby products and services with reduced delivery time and cost. It allows merchants to develop digital shops, inventory, definition of Delivery Zones using geospatial polygons, orders instantly. Consumers can search for local stores via PostGIS driven geospatial searchroutine, browse products, process orders and monitor fulfillment via status updates. Processes such as including shop discovery, cart and checkout, merchant dashboards, inventory and delivery, and zone editing have been made with a mobile first and user centric focus. The application is implemented with a modern and completely serverless architecture. The frontend is made with React Native and TypeScript, with authentication offered by Supabase, PostgreSQL with PostGIS,storage and event streams. Row Level Security enforces strong access control on roles for the consumer and merchant, and there are also subscriptions for ‘realtime’ updates within orders tracking and merchant notifications. It integrates geospatial computation and real-time communication and a clean user experience, AroundYou facilitates efficient local commerce and enhances digital accessibility for small businesses. It establishes a scalable structure for future enhancements like more advanced delivery logistics and additional payment options and richer merchant analytics.