AuraBD — AI-Powered E-Commerce for Bangladesh

An AI-powered Bangladesh-first e-commerce platform combining Gemini shopping assistance, real-time inventory, localized delivery, BDT pricing, and secure online shopping.

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AuraBD — AI-Powered E-Commerce for Bangladesh

Inspiration

E-commerce platforms are becoming increasingly common in Bangladesh, but many shopping experiences are still designed around generic global assumptions. Currency, delivery locations, phone numbers, addresses, and local shopping behavior are often treated as secondary concerns.

We wanted to build a commerce experience specifically designed for Bangladesh while exploring how generative AI could become a useful part of the shopping journey.

This led to AuraBD, a Bangladesh-focused e-commerce platform with an integrated Gemini-powered shopping assistant.

Instead of treating AI as a separate chatbot, we wanted Gemini to understand the store's actual product catalog and help customers discover products according to their needs, budget, and preferences.

For example, a customer can ask:

"Show me headphones under ৳15,000 with good battery life."

Aura AI can use the available store catalog to provide relevant product recommendations using actual BDT pricing.

What AuraBD Does

AuraBD provides a complete e-commerce experience covering the essential shopping journey:

Discover → Select → Cart → Checkout → Order → Track

Customers can:

  • Browse products
  • Search products
  • Filter by category
  • Filter by price
  • Select product variants
  • Check available stock
  • Add products to their cart
  • Enter Bangladesh-specific delivery information
  • Calculate shipping costs
  • Apply promotional codes
  • Place orders
  • Track orders
  • View order status history
  • Ask Aura AI for product recommendations

The platform also includes an administrative management interface for product, inventory, and order management.

Built for Bangladesh

One of the main goals of AuraBD was to make the application feel native to Bangladeshi customers rather than simply translating an international e-commerce template.

The platform supports:

  • Bangladeshi Taka (৳ BDT)
  • All 8 divisions of Bangladesh
  • 64 districts
  • 500+ upazilas/thanas
  • Bangladesh phone-number formats
  • Cascading Division → District → Upazila location selection
  • Bangladesh-specific shipping rules
  • Cash on Delivery
  • bKash
  • Nagad
  • Card payment architecture

Shipping is currently calculated according to the store's Bangladesh-specific rules:

  • Inside Dhaka: ৳60
  • Outside Dhaka: ৳120
  • Orders of ৳5,000 or more: Free Delivery

This localization makes the application directly relevant to the target market.

Gemini AI Shopping Assistant

The main AI feature is Aura AI, powered by Google's Gemini API through the official @google/genai SDK and Gemini 2.5 Flash.

The goal was not to create a generic AI chatbot.

Aura AI is designed around the store's product catalog and shopping context.

Customers can ask natural-language questions such as:

  • "I need headphones under ৳15,000."
  • "Which product is best for me?"
  • "Show me something available in Chattogram."
  • "What can I buy within ৳10,000?"

The assistant responds in the context of the store and uses Bangladeshi Taka when discussing prices.

Quick follow-up prompts are also provided to make product discovery easier.

This turns traditional catalog browsing into a more conversational shopping experience.

AI for Store Management

Gemini is also integrated into the administrative workflow.

The AI Product Description Generator helps administrators generate product descriptions suitable for the Bangladeshi market.

Instead of manually writing every product description, an administrator can provide product information and use Gemini to generate structured marketing content that can then be reviewed before being used in the store.

This demonstrates two practical uses of Gemini:

Customer side: AI-powered product discovery.

Admin side: AI-assisted product content creation.

Order and Inventory Workflow

AuraBD implements a server-side order pipeline rather than relying entirely on frontend calculations.

The order process follows:

Customer Cart
      ↓
Product & Variant Validation
      ↓
Stock Verification
      ↓
Price Calculation
      ↓
Promotion Validation
      ↓
Shipping Calculation
      ↓
Order Creation
      ↓
Inventory Allocation
      ↓
Order Tracking

The application also maintains order status progression:

Pending
   ↓
Confirmed
   ↓
Processing
   ↓
Shipped
   ↓
Delivered

Orders can also be cancelled where applicable.

Each order maintains a status timeline so customers can understand the progress of their purchase.

How We Built It

AuraBD was built as a full-stack web application.

Frontend

  • React 18
  • TypeScript
  • Vite
  • Tailwind CSS
  • Lucide React
  • Motion animations

The frontend provides a responsive storefront, product discovery interface, cart, checkout experience, order tracking, and administration interface.

Backend

  • Node.js
  • Express.js
  • REST APIs
  • TypeScript/JavaScript server tooling
  • Vite integrated development environment

The backend handles:

  • Product APIs
  • Order creation
  • Promotion validation
  • Bangladesh phone validation
  • Shipping calculations
  • Inventory operations
  • Order tracking
  • Administrative authorization
  • Gemini API communication

AI

  • Google Gemini
  • Gemini 2.5 Flash
  • @google/genai

Challenges

The biggest challenge was making the AI useful without allowing it to become disconnected from the actual shopping experience.

A generic chatbot can provide recommendations that do not exist in the store or mention incorrect prices.

We therefore designed Aura AI around the application's current catalog context so that its recommendations are related to the products available in the store.

Another major challenge was Bangladesh-specific localization.

Supporting Bangladesh properly required implementing more than BDT currency formatting. The application needed to understand Bangladesh's administrative hierarchy, local phone-number formats, delivery regions, and local payment expectations.

We also had to ensure that important e-commerce operations such as inventory validation, order creation, shipping calculation, and price calculation are handled by the backend rather than being trusted solely to the client.

What We Learned

This project taught us that the strongest AI features are not necessarily the most complicated ones.

Gemini becomes much more useful when it is connected to a real application workflow.

Instead of building an AI chatbot for its own sake, we used Gemini to solve two concrete problems:

  1. Helping customers discover products using natural language.
  2. Helping administrators create product content faster.

We also gained practical experience with full-stack development, REST APIs, inventory management, transaction-oriented order processing, responsive UI design, Bangladesh-specific localization, and integrating generative AI into a real application.

Accomplishments

We are proud that AuraBD combines a complete e-commerce workflow with a practical AI experience.

The project brings together:

  • Bangladesh-focused e-commerce
  • BDT pricing
  • Local administrative locations
  • Bangladesh phone validation
  • Localized shipping
  • Product search and filtering
  • Product variants
  • Inventory management
  • Shopping cart
  • Checkout
  • Promotions
  • Order tracking
  • Administrative management
  • Gemini-powered shopping assistance
  • Gemini-powered product description generation

The result is an example of how generative AI can be integrated into a practical commercial workflow rather than existing as a standalone chatbot.

What's Next

AuraBD currently focuses on the core shopping experience and Gemini integration.

Future development could include:

  • Production Firebase Authentication
  • Persistent PostgreSQL/Supabase storage
  • Real bKash and Nagad payment gateway integration
  • Real card payment processing
  • Firebase Cloud Messaging order notifications
  • Personalized AI recommendations
  • AI-powered product comparison
  • AI customer support
  • Delivery tracking
  • Inventory forecasting
  • Voice-based shopping
  • Advanced merchant analytics

Our long-term vision is to turn AuraBD into an intelligent commerce platform designed specifically for the Bangladeshi market.

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