InnSelf: A Smart On-Demand Home Services Platform with Real-Time Technician Bidding

MARVEL UVCE — Level 3 Project | Vismay V Chandra

📺 Watch the working demo · 💻 GitHub repository

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1. Problem Statement

Home services today lack pricing transparency — fixed-price platforms leave no room for fair, competitive quotes, and customers often overpay. Matching is also inefficient: customers struggle to find nearby, available technicians quickly, especially in urgent situations, while skilled technicians miss jobs due to limited visibility.

Affects: urban households, working professionals, families with limited time, and local technicians without access to a broader customer base.

2. Target Audience

Urban households · working professionals · families needing quick, reliable service · local technicians seeking visibility and more job opportunities.

3. Impact

• Better pricing via competitive bidding instead of one fixed number
• Faster technician matching, less time wasted searching
• More job opportunities for technicians, beyond word-of-mouth
• Higher technician earnings — they set their own competitive price

4. Solution Overview

InnSelf is a mobile marketplace connecting homeowners with local service professionals (plumbers, electricians, cleaners, etc.) through real-time bidding. A customer posts a job, qualified nearby technicians bid, and the customer picks the best offer by price, rating, and distance — an auction model that rewards competitive pricing and speed.

5. Scope

Services: Plumbing, Electrical, AC servicing, Carpentry, Cleaning, Appliance repair, Painting, Pest Control, Other. Platform: Android app (Flutter) + Supabase backend + in-app admin console. Geography: Hyperlocal, GPS-radius based — no city hardcoded, launch city not yet chosen. Excluded: large construction/interior design, non-household services, insurance/complex disputes, equipment rental/logistics.

6. What's Been Built

Not a prototype — every item below is working in the shipped app.

Core loop: email/password auth with full password-reset flow · customer/technician profiles with skills & service radius · job posting with photos · live bidding · full status lifecycle (open → accepted → en route → in progress → completed) · two-way reviews · technician earnings wallet.

Trust & safety: government ID verification (PAN/Voter ID/Driving Licence — Aadhaar deliberately excluded, since collecting it needs UIDAI authorisation InnSelf doesn't have, and masking the number alone wouldn't hide it in the uploaded photo) · verified badge · report & block (enforced at the database level, not just hidden client-side) · admin console for KYC, disputes, and reports.

Location: real GPS distance matching within a technician's radius · reverse geocoding with a permission-disclosure dialog before the OS prompt · saved addresses · auto-expiry of stale job posts with one-tap repost.

Coordination: in-app chat · live "on my way" status with ETA · push notifications · a one-time 4-digit completion code (read by the customer, entered by the technician) that a job cannot be marked "done" without.

Operations: cancel/reschedule with a required reason · historical price guidance from real accepted bids · direct rebooking of a trusted technician.

Compliance: privacy policy, terms, account deletion — all live · location disclosure · signed release build ready for Play Console.

7. Demo & Screenshots

Working demo (video): youtube.com/watch?v=Oi5fmY-tomg

Source code: github.com/VismayVChandra/innselfpro

Screenshots (customer app):

Home feed	Post a job — with price guidance

Live job progress	Completion code

In-app chat	Job expiry & repost

Payment & review	Profile — with reward points

Reward points detail

8. Trust & Safety Layer

Enforced server-side, not just in the UI: verification status and reward points are database-guarded so a user cannot self-edit them; blocking is a Row-Level Security rule on the messages table itself, not a client-side filter.

9. Reward Points System

Built beyond the original proposal. Points are earned automatically, server-side, never client-editable:

Action	Earner	Points
On-time arrival	Technician	+20
Job completed	Technician	+30
Prompt payment (24h)	Customer	+15
Review left	Customer	+10

Spend: 50 points boosts a bid or job to the top of the relevant list, highlighted. Deliberately non-monetary — no cash/discount conversion, since InnSelf takes no commission yet and a cash conversion adds payment-regulation complexity.

10. Technology Stack

Layer	Technology
Frontend	Flutter (Android native)
Backend	Supabase (Postgres, RLS, Realtime, Storage, Edge Functions)
Payments	Razorpay
Push notifications	Firebase Cloud Messaging
Legal pages	GitHub Pages

A lean, fully managed stack — no custom server to provision or patch.

11. Competitor Analysis

Platform	Pricing model	Limitation
Urban Company	Fixed pricing	No price negotiation
TaskRabbit	Service-fee based	Adds cost on top of quote
Thumbtack	Pay-per-lead	Technicians pay just to be seen
Handy	Standardised services	Limited technician choice
InnSelf	Real-time bidding	Transparent, competitive, hyperlocal

12. System Workflow & Design

Post job → nearby technicians notified & bid → customer compares and accepts → technician goes "on my way" with ETA → live chat → technician starts job → customer reads completion code, technician enters it → job closes → customer pays via Razorpay → both sides review each other.

Real challenges solved: RLS recursion between jobs/bids policies (fixed with SECURITY DEFINER helper functions) · trigger-only state transitions needing one-off backfills for pre-existing rows · Supabase's PKCE deep-link flow for password reset, routed through a hosted page since email clients don't reliably forward raw redirects to custom URL schemes.

13. Revenue Model

Planned: 10–20% commission per completed job.

	Amount
Service cost	₹1,000
Commission (15%)	₹150
Technician receives	₹850

Future streams: paid featured listings, subscriptions for professionals, in-app ads, surge pricing.

Current reality: no commission is taken yet — free at launch to build trust and adoption first.

14. Payment System

Razorpay handles in-app payment collection (UPI/card/wallet) once a job is confirmed complete via the one-time code. Not yet built: escrow-style holding and automatic commission-split payout to technicians (see Section 17).

15. Timeline & Cost

Timeline (6–8 weeks): UI/UX + frontend (wk 1-2) → backend/DB (wk 3-4) → bidding system (wk 5-6) → testing (wk 6-7) → deployment (wk 7-8).

Cost: Development ₹0 (self-built) · Play Store ₹3,000 (actual ~₹2,000) · Domain ₹500-1,000 (not yet bought, using free GitHub Pages) · Hosting ₹0 free tier · OTP ₹500-1,000 (avoided — email/password used instead) · Misc ₹1,000. Total: ₹5,000–₹7,000. Monthly: ₹0–₹500.

16. Current Status & Roadmap

Status: Feature-complete and submission-ready — signed release build done, legal pages live, Play Console submission underway.

Roadmap: AdMob advertising · commission/escrow payments · deeper reward system · iOS release.

17. Known Gaps — What's Not Yet Done

Honest gaps versus the original proposal:

• iOS app — Android only today; Flutter reduces the lift but real iOS-specific work remains (push certs, deep links, device testing).
• Commission/escrow payments — the biggest gap. Razorpay collects payment, but no commission is deducted and there's no automated technician payout yet. Solvable via Razorpay's Route product (linked accounts + held transfers released on completion), but needs technician bank onboarding and is a real feature, not a small patch.
• General user management in admin — only KYC/disputes/reports exist, not a full user list with suspend/ban.
• Subscriptions & surge pricing — correctly still "future," as proposed.
• Custom domain — not purchased; using free GitHub Pages.

Built differently, by choice: email/password instead of OTP (avoids SMS cost/dependency); non-monetary points-based boosts instead of paid featured listings.

18. Conclusion

InnSelf is a working Android app, not just a proposal — combining real-time bidding, verified trust, live tracking, and secure payments into one product that's already feature-complete for launch. What remains is honestly scoped: full iOS support and the commission/escrow layer the business model depends on.

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Vismay V Chandra — MARVEL UVCE, Level 3 Project