Building a Creator Marketplace for India
Executive Summary
TrendStarz is a marketplace where Indian brands hire influencers and photographers for campaigns. The money is held safely until the work is posted, so both sides can trust each other. I designed, built and run it end to end, from the first screen to payouts and admin tools.
Market Context
Most brand–creator deals in India happen over Instagram DMs and WhatsApp, with nothing that protects either side. I saw the same five problems again and again.
Creators worry they won't be paid after posting. Brands worry about paying upfront and getting nothing back.
A creator accepts, the product ships, and the post never goes up. Nobody keeps track of it.
Deliverables, scripts and posting dates live in chat threads and get disputed later.
Follower counts say little. Small brands can't tell a reliable creator from an inflated one.
Most platforms only match brands with influencers. Influencers who need a photographer, and photographers who need talent, have no organised way to find each other.
Users
Three roles share one product, and each can send or receive a campaign.
Reliable creators, proof of posting, no wasted spend
What they getSearch by niche and city, held payments, posting tracking, refunds when a creator doesn't post
Paid work, guaranteed payment, a credible profile
What they getCampaign invites, UPI payouts, a TrendScore that shows quality beyond followers
Shoots with brands and influencers, a portfolio
What they getInvites from brands and influencers, a portfolio profile, file delivery by Drive link
Product
The whole deal now happens in one place: the brief, the payment, proof of posting and the payout. Every invite is a campaign: the brief, deliverables and dates are agreed before anyone commits.
Paid, Product (barter), Location visit, and Product + Paid. Each type has its own rules for shipping, visits and limits.
The host pays through Razorpay when confirming a creator. The money is released to the creator's UPI only after the post is live. If the creator doesn't post, the host gets a refund.
Each campaign has a post date with a fixed grace period. The platform marks posts as on time, late or missed, and shows no-shows to the host.
A profile quality score built from engagement, consistency and completeness, so brands can judge creators beyond follower count.
Monthly campaign and invite slots, lower commission, and creator membership, all with clear limits.
Campaign approval, disputes, refunds, payout queues, profile verification and a data-health page that checks the system every night.
Email, push and WhatsApp messages that open the exact invite or payment they refer to.
Live Product
Real screens from the live product, on desktop and phone.
The first screen asks who you are. Brands get the main action, and influencers and photographers each get their own path, so nobody starts on a page written for someone else.
Brands filter by niche, creator type, city, follower tier, TrendScore and age, and compare starting rates before inviting anyone. On phones the filters fold into one button so the results stay in view.
Five quality signals roll up into one score. Creators see each signal and what to work on; brands only see the overall score.
One page explains how campaigns work for influencers, brands and photographers, with tabs to focus on a single role.
Brand sign-up is split into three steps: brand info, location and media, then plan. A short confirmation first says what a brand account is for, so people pick the right account type before filling in the form.
Design Rationale
Most decisions came from watching real users get confused or stuck, then removing the cause.
WhyCreators thought a "collaboration invite" was an Instagram Collab-post request and accepted without reading the brief
WhyA later commission change can never change what someone already agreed to
WhyThey see exactly what will reach their bank, which avoids disputes
WhyPayouts never stall after the work is done
WhySimple to explain and fair to both sides, so I kept it even when other options came up
WhyStops spam invites and makes no-shows cost something
WhyKeeps the marketplace focused on paid work
WhyThe scope I can deliver reliably, stated clearly in the terms
WhyMatches the business's real tax status and blocks wrong invoices
Quality
A platform that holds other people's money has to be correct, not just working. Before growth, I ran more than 80 audit passes over money, data, security and privacy, and fixed what each one found.
Guards stop a double payout or a double refund when two requests run at once. A payment reference can't be used twice. Razorpay payments are matched daily against the records, and overdue payouts and refunds raise alerts.
A data-health page runs 28 checks every night, including whether payments add up, refunds are owed, links point to real records and scheduled jobs are running.
Encrypted nightly database backups are kept for 14 days. A restore is tested automatically every week.
Private fields (UPI, phone, tokens) are stripped from every public response. Account lockout after repeated failed logins, two-factor login for admins, security-alert emails, and logout everywhere when a password changes. Every admin money action is logged with who did it.
Consent is recorded at signup, users can download their own data, and account deletion is confirmed by password or an emailed code. A written retention policy decides when old records are anonymised.
1,986 backend tests (some run against a real database) and 361 frontend tests run before every release, followed by a smoke test after each deploy.
System Design
The web app talks only to the API. The API owns every rule about money and data, so no rule can be skipped by calling a service directly.
Scheduled jobs (payout reminders, data checks, backups, score refresh) run inside the API on India time, with locks so two servers never run the same job twice.
Impact
TrendStarz is live with paid, barter and location campaigns, held payments, UPI payouts, Premium plans and a full admin console. With the foundation in place, the focus has moved from building to growth.
Figures as of November 2026.
Reflection
One word, "collaboration", made creators misread every invite. Renaming it did more than any new feature.
Most serious bugs only appeared when two actions happened at the same moment, like a double approval or a payment arriving after a deadline. Guarding against those mattered more than adding features.
Nightly checks found problems such as stale Premium flags and a stuck refund before any user reported them.
I held back AI matching until real usage data shows where matching actually fails.
The platform was strategically designed with freemium and premium collaboration models in mind. UX decisions considered user acquisition, creator engagement, campaign visibility, monetization opportunities, and scalable marketplace growth.