Bunks.
- Client
- Bunks
- Role
- Founding Engineer · Product & Architecture
- Year
- 2025
- Duration
- 5 months
- Visit
- Live site
- Next.js
- TanStack
- Zustand
- Tailwind
- shadcn/ui
- Radix UI
- Turborepo
- Express
- BullMQ
- AWS
- ElastiCache
- AWS Lambda
- Python
- Stripe
- Supabase
- Vercel
Guest check-ins
5,000+
Properties live
50+
Avg. check-in
30 sec
New UIDAI guidelines explicitly bar properties from collecting and storing Aadhaar photocopies — yet most Indian hostels and small hotels still ran on stapled forms and shoeboxes of IDs. We needed a product that made compliance the easiest path, not the most painful.
Three moves that defined the engagement.
- 01
Designed a guest-side flow that takes a median 30 seconds — scan a QR, verify Aadhaar offline on the guest's own phone, get WiFi via SMS.
- 02
Engineered a Bunks Passport identity layer so a verified guest at one property is recognised instantly across the network.
- 03
Built the platform on AES-256 at rest, India-only data residency, and DPDP Act 2023 controls baked into the architecture from day zero.
Every app, service and worker that ships with the product — and where each one runs.
A property OS where the guest's phone does the heavy lifting on the front end, a TypeScript brain holds the compliance boundary, and a small constellation of specialised workers handles the regulator-grade work — without ever leaking onto the guest's path.
Web Guest e-check-in (Web)
Zero-install, QR-launched flow on the guest's own phone — verification, signature capture and WiFi handoff in under a minute.
- Next.js
- TanStack
- Zustand
- Tailwind
- shadcn/ui
- Radix UI
Web Property dashboard
Front-desk control plane — live arrivals, room status, KYC review, statutory filings and the digital concierge inbox.
- Next.js
- TanStack
- Zustand
- Tailwind
- shadcn/ui
- Radix UI
API API service
The compliance brain — sessions, identity, bookings, billing, audit log and the integration surface for OTAs and PMS.
- Express
- TypeScript
- Postgres
- Redis
Service· AWS Lambda Identity verifier
Validates government-issued offline e-KYC envelopes server-side, never persisting raw identifiers.
- Python
- AWS Lambda
Service· AWS Lambda Document generator
Renders compliant statutory filings, guest receipts and audit packs as PDFs — bilingual, signed, timestamped.
- Python
- AWS Lambda
- S3
Worker Realtime + jobs
Notifications, SMS WiFi handoff, photo uploads, audit exports and OTA reconciliation — kept off the guest-facing path.
- BullMQ
- Redis
- Node
Service Bunks Passport
A network-wide identity layer so a verified guest is recognised across the Bunks network — without re-sharing the underlying ID.
- Node
- Postgres
Architected around DPDP Act 2023 from day zero — encryption at rest, India-only data residency, and a hard line between identifier hashes and the rest of the system.
Each choice is paired with the reason it earned its slot on this project.
- 01Guest experience
Built for instant launches over weak hostel WiFi and dense interfaces that still read on a 6-inch phone. The flow has to feel faster than a stapled form — every component is tuned for that.
- Next.js
- TanStack
- Zustand
- Tailwind
- shadcn/ui
- Radix UI
- 02Compliance brain
Auth, billing, audit and identity all live inside one well-typed service so the regulated boundary is obvious. Postgres is the system of record, with row-level security wired into every guest table.
- Express
- TypeScript
- Postgres
- 03Specialised compute
A handful of workloads — verification, document generation — don't belong in a Node API. They get their own Python runtimes on Lambda, scaling from zero on quiet nights to festival-week peaks.
- Python
- AWS Lambda
- 04Async work
BullMQ + Redis for SMS, uploads, OTA reconciliation and audit exports — anything that should never make a guest wait at reception.
- BullMQ
- Redis
- 05Infra & payments
AWS Mumbai for India-only residency, Vercel for the guest edge, Stripe for property billing. Boring choices, picked because compliance is the unboring part.
- AWS
- Vercel
- Stripe
30-second QR-based check-in with offline Aadhaar XML verification — no loose photocopies, no compliance risk.
Bunks scaled to 50+ properties across 10+ Indian cities and 5,000+ check-ins in its early months — turning what used to be a 7-minute reception chore into a 30-second moment of welcome.