I am launching an India-focused marketplace for certified Islamic and halal products that can one day rival Amazon or Flipkart in depth and convenience. The catalogue will eventually cover everything from modest clothing and accessories to halal food, everyday groceries, books and other educational materials, so the solution must be truly multi-category and multi-vendor from day one. Platform I am open to Shopify, WooCommerce, or any other stack you can justify as cheaper to run yet easy to scale. Low monthly overhead and minimal transaction or app fees are crucial, so please outline why your chosen platform keeps long-term costs in check while still handling heavy traffic and thousands of SKUs. Core features to deliver • Multi-vendor architecture with individual vendor dashboards, product upload, order management and automated commission split • Payment gateway integration: PayPal, Stripe, Razorpay, Cashfree (plus room to add more economical options in the future) • Indian shipping aggregator integration (Shiprocket, Delhivery or similar) with real-time rates, label generation and tracking • Ratings & reviews, coupon/discount engine, advanced search and category filtering • Mobile-responsive storefront that passes Google Core Web Vitals and supports Hindi/English localisation • Tax/GST setup for Indian compliance and downloadable invoices for buyers and vendors • Analytics dashboard for sales, traffic and vendor performance Project flow & acceptance 1. Present platform choice with cost comparison and plugin/app list 2. Build staging site, configure core marketplace functions and invite me to test product uploads and a full checkout flow 3. Integrate the four requested gateways in test mode, prove live transactions and automatic splits to vendors 4. Connect shipping API, run a mock fulfillment cycle end-to-end 5. Final polish: design tweaks, responsive checks, SEO essentials, then migrate to production and train me on day-to-day operations If you have previous multi-vendor marketplace builds, especially in the Indian e-commerce space, share live links or case studies so I can see your approach to performance and cost control.