u/raw-shan

Six months ago I started a hobby project just to learn how real product development works for interviews. One thing led to another and I ended up building a full homestay booking platform from scratch, alone, while working full time.

It is called OffbeatExperience. The idea is simple there are dozens of wonderful small properties run by local families that either have no online presence or are buried on platforms that charge them heavily for every booking.

I built the entire backend myself using modern system design principles with ofc AI assistance with UI. There will be bugs and I know there are rough edges. If you find something broken, please tell me. I would much rather hear about it and fix it than pretend it does not exist.

Right now I am focused entirely on getting hosts listed. No point talking about guest bookings until there are enough properties for guests to actually browse. So if you run a homestay, a small guesthouse, an offbeat stay anywhere around this region, I would love to have you on the platform. I will personally help you with the listing process if you need it. You can reach out to me directly.

I wanted to do it for community however, there are rough patches such as infra management, legal regulations, payment support, inbuilt services which costs a bit and I wouldn't be able to keep its online presence for long without a service fee. But it's minimal, charging 60 - 70 % less than other platforms.

The platform is also not limited to Siliguri and Darjeeling. Those are just the places I know well and focused on first. If you are from somewhere else in the northeast or the hills and think this makes sense for your area, reach out anyway. If you know someone who runs a small property and might find this useful, pass it along. That is genuinely the most helpful thing anyone can do right now.

offbeatexperience.in

I am a backend developer by profession. About 6 months ago I started building a small project to learn how system design and product development actually works end to end, not just writing APIs at a job but actually owning something from database design to deployment to payments to scalability.

Somewhere along the way it stopped being just a learning project and became something I genuinely wanted to exist.

The result is OffbeatExperience, a platform for small homestays and offbeat stays in places like Siliguri, Darjeeling, Kurseong and the surrounding region. The idea is simple: there are dozens of wonderful small properties run by local families that either have no online presence or are buried on platforms that charge them heavily for every booking.

If you are not into tech, skip this paragraph and read on.

On the technology side, the backend is built on .NET Core with a clean layered architecture, PostgreSQL with geospatial extensions for location-aware search, Redis for distributed session management and booking hold expiry, and Razorpay for payments including webhook-based reconciliation. The whole thing runs on Azure, with Application Insights for telemetry and Prometheus and Grafana embedded for real-time monitoring. The pricing engine and tax logic are written entirely by hand to comply with Indian GST, TCS under Section 52, and TDS under 194-O. The booking flow uses an escrow-style hold pattern so inventory is never double-booked. The UI had AI assistance in the design (not a frontend guy using fancy react library), I will be honest about that, but the system underneath it was built carefully by one person. Currently running on Azure App Service, with containerization and K8 orchestration planned as traffic grows.

The platform charges a service fee that is lower than what the major competitors charge. For the first six months I am offering a 50% reduction on that fee for all hosts who onboard during this period. If you are a small property owner and you are worried about platform costs eating into what little margin you have, this is built with exactly that concern in mind.

Right now I am focused entirely on getting hosts listed. No point talking about guest bookings until there are enough properties for guests to actually browse. So if you run a homestay, a small guesthouse, an offbeat stay anywhere around this region, I would love to have you on the platform. I will personally help you with the listing process if you need it. You can reach out to me directly. This sounds like promotion but I want it to be something for the community. I am charging a service fee because the infra cost to keep it running isn't cheap given the design of it.

There will be bugs. I built this along with help from my brother, and I know there are rough edges. If you find something broken, please tell me. I would much rather hear about it and fix it than pretend it does not exist.

The platform is also not limited to Siliguri and Darjeeling. Those are just the places I know well and focused on first. If you are from somewhere else in the northeast or the hills and think this makes sense for your area, reach out anyway.

If you know someone who runs a small property and might find this useful, pass it along. That is genuinely the most helpful thing anyone can do right now. Let me know if you like it or have concerns on design or you want to build something like this on your own.

My MacBook M4 was barely 2 months old when the Return and Shift keys started feeling stiff and unsmooth. Nothing dramatic, I just assumed they'd pop the keys off, clean underneath and it'd be sorted. So I walked into the authorised Apple service centre in Siliguri's International Market (Macintel) with that expectation, especially since I had AppleCare active.

They took a day for diagnostics and called me with a quote of ₹37,000, citing liquid damage. I told them straight up that I hadn't spilled anything on it and asked them to recheck. They were adamant. I even requested them to just lift the keys and clean it but apparently that's not their policy, they only replace, not repair. I left pretty frustrated because this was clearly a warranty case and I had AppleCare on top of that, yet somehow they landed on ₹37K for a full keyboard replacement.

I took the laptop back and escalated directly to Apple India. I insisted it had to be a manufacturing defect given the laptop was only 2 months old and I was certain I hadn't caused any damage.

That's where things turned around.

Apple India arranged a pickup at my location and sent it to their Bangalore service centre. They kept me updated throughout and within a week I got an email confirming the repair was done, parts were replaced under manufacturing defect, and my laptop was on its way back. Due to the election the delivery was a bit delayed but no fuss.

Honestly such a relief because I had just bought it and ₹37K on top of that would've been rough as u wouldn't be able to afford that. But it also made me genuinely angry at how the Siliguri centre handled this. A 2 month old laptop with AppleCare and their first move was a ₹37K quote. If you're ever in a similar situation, don't just accept what a service centre tells you. Google things up, call Apple India directly and escalate. It made all the difference for me. Thought of sharing the story so you guys can stay vigilant.