Inspiration
Every college student in India knows the drill — rush to the print shop before exams, wait in a chaotic line, pay cash, pray the file prints right. We lived it. 44 million students face this daily. No app, no queue system, no digital payment — just a counter and confusion. QuillPrint was born from that frustration.
What it does
QuillPrint is a cloud print marketplace. Customers upload documents from anywhere, pay online via Razorpay, and walk into a nearby print shop only to collect — using a 4-digit collection code. Print shops receive pre-paid, pre-processed orders silently through the Instana Service, which auto-prints jobs via zero manual intervention. No queue. No cash. No chaos.
How we built it
Backend: FastAPI + PostgreSQL + Redis Frontend: React PWA on Vercel - offline-capable, self-hosted fonts via Fontsource Instana Service: WebSocket to backend, splits B&W/colour/photo jobs via ------. Payments: Razorpay (MVP), Zoho Payments (primary target) Storage: OCI Object Storage for uploaded documents Security: ClamAV scanning, PDF sanitization, Office macro rejection on every upload
Challenges we ran into
React PWA + SEO — SPAs don't index; built a custom prerender.mjs SSR script with StaticRouter + HelmetProvider deployed via Vercel build:ssg Instana Service print routing — zero vendor interaction
Accomplishments that we're proud of
End-to-end order flow: upload → payment → auto-print → collection code — working in production
What we learned
SSR for React PWAs needs intentional architecture from day one, not a retrofit Solo founding a marketplace means you're the product manager, lawyer, infra engineer, and sales team simultaneously
What's next for QuillPrint | Print Smart, Skip the Queue.
Hard launch: Live payment gateway + first vendor onboarded with Instana Service active
Log in or sign up for Devpost to join the conversation.