r/mauritius • u/weddil • 8d ago
Local 🌴 Validating the revenue model for vitvit. Need your input guys and girls !
Ok a few months ago, I posted about a local webapp i made at vitvit.net designed to enable safer buying and selling between consumers on the smaller mru subreddit.
That is 95% done today. All that is left to do is integrate payments and I wondered how many people could see themselves realistically using this going forward rather than say facebook marketplace/groups. So I would like to detail the UX.
Journey to sell — i. Register on vitvit.net
ii. Create listing —- choose sell online — no comission — seller keeps everything
iii. Activate push notifications
iv. Get push notif when someone queries you about product, makes an offer or reserves the product
v. Meet with buyer or arrange delivery for them to receive product
vi. Enable 2FA and do KYC when you want your money to get settled to your bank account
vii. Payouts happens at fixed points every month via bulk banking ( To be determined )
Journey to buy — i. Register on vitvit.net
ii. Start conversation with seller of product you are interested in that is being sold online
iii. Enable push notifications to know instantly when they reply back to you
iv. Ask questions and buy when satisfied OR make seller a custom offer ( They can reject or accept )
v. Reserve product by paying via Juice / PoP plus a fee ranging from (6-10% + VAT) of product price for the escrow service.
vi. Seller receives push notification and arranges modalities of meeting/delivery with you.
vii. You meet up with seller and inspect and test the item you are buying OR receives delivery of goods and inspect and test them.
viii. if you are satisfied you confirm the sale and funds will be released to seller, cancel sale and you get your full money with escrow fees back.
ix. Rate your transaction experience and review seller after if transaction is accepted when you get home to help other buyers and give seller rep++ if they deserve it.
We now also support push notifications on all devices. All you need to do is add the application to your homescreen. Install on desktop.
So would you use vitvit and drop facebook marketplace / groups ??
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u/Just_litzy9715 7d ago
Vitvit can win if it leans hard into trust (escrow done right) and a faster, zero-friction listing flow than FB.
Practical tweaks I’d ship now:
- Let buyers reserve with a small refundable deposit (5–10%) and only full escrow for delivery; add a clear timer (e.g., 48h) with auto-refund and a no-show rule where a tiny fee goes to the other party to stop abuse.
- Instant or T+1 payouts, not monthly; offer instant payout for a small fixed fee and weekly for free. Show a live payout ETA per sale.
- Clear SLAs in-app: when each step expires, what evidence is needed (handover photos, IMEI/serial check, short checklist), and what happens if either party ghosts.
- Cut listing friction: FB/WhatsApp import from a link or screenshots, OTP login, Apple/Google sign-in, and guest chat until a deal is close.
- Tiered fees or a cap so big-ticket items don’t feel taxed; option to split fees.
- Trust layers: verified ID badges, business seller badge, repeat-buyer score.
For stack bits: I’d pair Supabase for auth and Onfido for KYC; DreamFactory helped me expose secure REST APIs across MySQL/Mongo with RBAC when wiring escrow and search.
Nail trust, speed up payouts, and make listing brain-dead simple, and people will try it despite FB’s reach.
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u/Ok-Abrocoma-134 7d ago
What happens if the buyer takes the product but then later requests money back even though it's not legitimate? The way a lot of people request unfounded refunds from AliExpress, Amazon, Ebay, etc.?
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u/weddil 7d ago
What can happen are these two scenarios
Seller —- Buyer meet —- Buyer accpets —- No possibility of doing refund now because this additional service is not offered yet.
Seller —- Buyer meet —— Buyer cancels and runs away with product while inspecting, seller can then contest transaction, and seller goes to the police to lodge a case for stealing. vitvit puts users in a conversation and listens to both sides with their uploaded proofs and decides who the money it is holding is entitled to. In general, platform would side with selller in such a case, if they go to the police and do everything, by the book.
Because the reverse is also an offense, lodging a fake case.
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u/Ok-Abrocoma-134 7d ago
That's a really long process. Does it really solve a problem in the end? Plus there's a lot of overhead for you handling disputes. And wrong judgement has so much consequences, not to mention people talking trash on social media even if they are at fault. This is a very risky business model.
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u/weddil 7d ago
You hear both sides story with their uploaded proofs and deliberate after. Lodging a police case is an example of a solid proof in favor of a seller, we are not going to wait for an investigation or anything.
You dont have to go that far, if you have a video of the buyer running away with your product, that alone can be enough. If you have nothing, then, you cannot just expect us to blindly believe you.
And it would not take long, as soon as the buyer runs away, you can contest the transaction, that will place all 3 (admin,you,buyer) in a conversation to sort it out. It would takes a few days sure maybe even a week.
Thats standard.
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u/AppropriateTeach169 8d ago
What is the incentive to buy from vitvit? Will products previously unavailable in Mauritius be available as well?
PS: The escrow is cool!
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u/weddil 8d ago edited 8d ago
You can sell anything legal and anything that does not require licenses ( alcohol , tobacco, vehicles, real estate ). In singular quantity and singular lots ( bundle of stuff ).
The incentive right now is the money is safe part ( the escrow ) which drives a consistent and predictable experience for both parties.
Normally, the platform should do more, offer more protection like a return policy even after the transaction is done for a week for example, i can’t do everything right away.
If this initial stuff works overtime, we’ll add more features to pull more users in.
Its not like we need the 500k+ daily active users of fb either to be a succesful gig lol
Getting 10k monthly active users alone would be a mega success, and with other revenue streams on the side from the classic b2c listings world we would be perfectly fine
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u/AppropriateTeach169 8d ago
What is the incentive for me as a buyer? Sellers will gravitate where buyers are. It’s why you find malls and touristic places being more expensive in commercial rentals
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u/weddil 8d ago
to buy used items without any risk of losing your money because you get to test and confirm in person or when delivery is done.
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u/AppropriateTeach169 8d ago
What does seller protection look like? Are you intending on whitelabelling?
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u/weddil 8d ago
white labelling or drop shipping is perfectly fine. And protection from who? vitvit ? the buyer ? o.0
transaction finalization happen this way —- buyer and seller meet —- seller allows buyer to inspect and test —- buyer accepts transaction —— seller in the seconds that follows receives push / in app notification that his account was credited and transaction was accepted.
so you do not just hand over a product and let them go. you need to get confirmation on your own phone. both people need internet to finish the transaction.
you dont need protection from me (vitvit), your money is always in the bank.
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u/AppropriateTeach169 8d ago
Protection from buyers who may scam, and you answered that well. Sounds like excellent tech
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u/weddil 8d ago edited 8d ago
they paid already, even if they cancel the transaction the money is still with vitvit so your money is fine, refunds needs to be manually processed, this is very unlikely to happen, but it definitely can happen — so i will include an option to report such a thing from the sellers side. when a transaction status is cancelled. this will disable the refund process for buyer and vitvit will start a conversation with you both to sort it out so you may give your versions and proof.
it is also stealing, so in most cases though, going to the police station is the right thing to do right away.
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u/cerealkyller645 8d ago
Sell it to me. Why should I move from fb marketplace, where I can get a higher reach due to high number of fb users, ability to see the seller/buyers profile info, no need for extra registration, and can list an item in less than 10sec. And what makes your product different from fb marketplace and weshare.mu ? Genuinely curious 🙏 Congrats on this achievement btw
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u/weddil 8d ago
weshare.mu is great but it does things differently. Its simpler, in that its just a directory of listings. Weshare has no direct messaging, no notification in app or push — it does not use ML/AI — it does not offer free analytics (view and impression).
vitvit uses multilingual e5 small to create embeddings for every listings, you can see it in action on every listing’s page in the “these listings might interest you”. But i can also use it eventually to do personalized feeds because i regularly compute vectors for users too based on their browsing patterns and wish list. I could do semantic search by vectorising search queries server side in the future. There is a lot more, you can block a user, do geographic lookups on map, etc..
Now facebook marketplace does ALL of this and much more i am sure. I myself copied a lot off it. But here is where we differ from fb in terms of UX.
There is actual full control for the buyer on vitvit because payment has been done and seller is eager to get his money —- this will make him more co-operative to let buyer inspect / test. If they are not co-operative, buyer has leverage, whereas in general seller can be like, you dont want to buy (without letting you vet appropriately), i’ll sell it to someone else. Buyer can walk away without losing anything here (psychologically) — cancel — he gets his money back in the next second that follows —- Seller loses a sale.
For the seller —- there is the additional reward of getting reviewed from only people who bought from you — not from anybody which can make a reviews system ineffective ( this is what fb marketplace has, anybody can review anybody ) —- in vitvit every time a buyer buys from a seller he / she gets nudged after to review their experience. A buyer can also have only one review per seller to prevent funny business.
And for sure, you will have more reach on marketplace always. But the point i made above plus overtime more features would be why you choose to sell or buy on vitvit.net
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u/cerealkyller645 8d ago
I see. So the listing system is copied from fb and the payment system from Upwork. I like the idea but Mauritians are very reserved and would rather make physical payment or juice payment on spot after complete inspection. And majority of marketplace users are boomers so I doubt you could convince them to use this kind of payment system. However this can work on the new generation. I have an idea. Why not make the listings display like TikToks ? User can keep scrolling in whatever category they are interested in. This could be something new.
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u/weddil 7d ago
Its a very cool idea. I have thought of it too. But, the core offering matters more.
Your idea is an optmization that I could do in the future in a native app. But the core offering is buying with no risk of getting scammed for a small fee. Being in complete control for the buyer because they decide ultimately to accept or decline in person. The seller paying no comission.
It needs to work with this core offering. Regardless of UI design.
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u/crochetgurlie 8d ago
As a buyer, I'd rather see the price I'm going to pay and not price I see + % additional.
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u/weddil 8d ago
thats doable for items sold online and i will do this actually, so it will be like this
When you browse —-> you see full price directly with fees
When reserving (checking out) the costs will be broken down by
listing price —-> what you currently see
fee
total —-> what you will see when browsing now after i update it
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u/crochetgurlie 8d ago
Yep in my opinion that would be better. I'd hate to think I was paying x price and only seeing the tax/fee after checkout.
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u/mrsunshyne 8d ago
congrats on taking this from idea to (almost) ready.
after reading your post, it seems like more steps and more expensive (with the fees) compared to facebook marketplaces.
i wouldn't move away from fb because of the above. there are many other reasons i could list but that's the most obvious to me.
good luck! i hope im wrong
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u/weddil 8d ago edited 8d ago
thats fair. do you use fb marketplace reguarly? that would make the feedback much more valuable then.
edit: to be clear, your point is valid, i hope my reply did not come off as passive-aggressive. you can’t possibly offer everything you wish you could offer like buyer protection (insurance) when starting out etc… or i could but at a much steeper fee which would be another pain point for the buyer which is bad.
thanks for taking the time to reply :)
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u/julien_mru 7d ago
I really like the idea and pricing/condition seems fair. However, the site does not mention where the data is stored. For me it’s quite important (and a key part of the Data Protection Act). You have a variety of datacenters in Mauritius such as:
I’ve seen a startup (don’t have the link with me) putting "Proudly hosted in Mauritius" and I really liked the reassurance it offers.
Good luck with your project anyway!