Engineering LIA: A Licensed Peer-to-Peer Rental and Resale Marketplace

How CoolMinds took a marketplace from clickable prototype to production in 12 months.

Executive Summary

Liabilities Into Assets is a platform that helps consumers buy or rent the products that are not being used in a connected marketplace. The LIA Marketplace works at a consumer-to-consumer (C2C) level, allowing users to buy or rent items directly from others. CoolMinds Technologies delivered the platform in a turnkey engineering engagement, after getting approval for the clickable Figma prototypes and then finally deploying in a marketplace with booking calendars, location-based discovery, payments, and real-time messaging.

The platform was ecommerce in nature and was built using Java/J2EE, Flutter and MySQL. LIA was tailored for and launched exclusively in the US market and subsequently licensed to the client. The engagement was delivered in a year with two sprints. One sprint covered six months of development then followed by the next with six months of QA, production deployment and maintenance. CoolMinds also shared the codebase and completed a handover to the client's internal engineering team.

Project Detail

About the Client and Platform

Most people own items they use only occasionally and can overtime become liabilities rather than assets. LIA was built around the idea that these underused assets could create value for their owners while giving others the option to rent or buy what they need.

The platform brings both buyer and renter transaction models into a single marketplace. Users can browse listings, check availability, book items in advance, communicate with owners and complete payment workflows. From bicycles and ski equipment to laptops and other everyday assets, LIA was designed to accommodate a broad range of products.

The platform also includes a Make-A-Wish foundation collaboration feature developed by CoolMinds. It provides a charitable social element into the marketplace experience.

The Business Challenge

Building a marketplace is complex and depends heavily on its intended end purpose. Here buying and renting requires more features and elements than provided by a common listing interface. A purchase model is a one-time transaction which only involves two parties and delivery of a product or service and returns if failure happens. A rental model introduces multiple complexities which includes: time-bound availability, advance reservations, pickup schedules and return-related workflows.

LIA needed to accommodate both models without making the experience cumbersome for buyers, renters or owners.

There were certain seller specific features added which included:

• Ability to establish their own product prices and terms
• Manage when their assets were available
• Temporarily block dates when they could not fulfill rental requests.

The platform accommodated special situations like accounting for missed pickups, overlapping booking requests, payment processing and communication between users who might not know each other. Another important requirement was the addition of location-based discovery that allowed users to find and book relevant items beyond their immediate vicinity.

The main aim of the platform was to bring these workflows together in a single marketplace. It gave sellers flexibility over how they listed and managed their assets.

The Solution

A marketplace built around buying and renting

LIA was developed as a single platform supporting permanent purchases and time-bound rentals. Here sellers had their own discretion, they could create listings, define their own prices and terms, and make assets available according to their schedules. The platform applies standard transaction fees.

For rentals, users could reserve items in advance for a pre-planned specified duration. Owners were given block out periods to mark their assets as unavailable, say if they were out of town or using the particular product. They also were able to open the items for bookings again when they were ready.

If in case a renter fails to collect an item then the platform's described workflow includes:

• One-day holding period before the listing returns to the marketplace
• After that period there is a possibility of a seller-defined penalty

Booking, payments and communication

To support rental scheduling, LIA incorporates booking calendars and availability management. Addressing conflicting booking actions and double booking prevention was done through race-condition handling and debouncing during a booking workflow.

Stripe was chosen as the payment gateway then integrated and tested for the US market. Booking updates, billing and invoicing were communicated in real time using in app push and email notifications. Real-time in-app messaging allowed buyers and renters to communicate with owners.

Location-based filtering helps users discover relevant listings, including items located farther away. Together, these capabilities bring discovery, scheduling, payments and communication into one marketplace experience.

A Make-A-Wish feature

One of the core marketplace value-additions CoolMinds developed for LIA was the Make-A-Wish feature. It introduced a charitable element to the marketplace alongside buying and renting functionality.

The feature adds a distinctive dimension of corporate social responsibility to the e-commerce nature of the platform.

Architecture and Technology

LIA used a microservices-based architecture, with Java/J2EE powering the backend and transaction engine. Flutter was used for mobile application development, while MySQL handled data storage. Apache Tomcat provided the application runtime, with scheduling capabilities also used within the platform.

The application was hosted on AWS infrastructure in the US, with autoscaling configured to accommodate changing demand. Stripe provided payment gateway integration, and Figma was used to create clickable prototypes before full-scale development began.

The available project information does not identify the individual microservices, their communication patterns, or the exact server-side controls used for booking concurrency. These details can be added if engineering documentation becomes available.

Delivery and Handover

CoolMinds delivered LIA through a turnkey engagement spanning approximately 12 months, with all nine team members working concurrently across the project.

The engagement brought together two architects, a project manager, three developers, a mobile developer, a DevOps engineer and a database administrator.

Development was carried out in India, with the platform hosted on US-based AWS infrastructure. Following deployment in the US market, the client received a complete licence to market and sell LIA in that territory. At the client's request, CoolMinds shared the codebase and completed a handover to the client's internal software engineers.

CoolMinds retains the product and the ability to license it in other markets.

Outcomes

• From prototype to production. LIA progressed from clickable Figma wireframes to a deployed marketplace supporting buying, renting, booking, payments and communication.
• A complete product licensed to the client. The US client received the licence to market and sell LIA in its target market.
• Engineering handover completed. The codebase was shared with the client's internal team, supporting the transition of ongoing engineering responsibilities.
• A product available for further licensing. CoolMinds retains the ability to license LIA in markets outside the US.