LOBBI
A two-sided marketplace with an embedded AI booking agent: three apps, real-time inventory and split payments, engineered end to end.
This one is ours: we built LOBBI, and MnT Future holds an ownership interest in it through a separate company. We say that first because the engineering is worth reading about either way. LOBBI is a live two-sided marketplace: players discover and book sports venues, owners run slots, pricing and payouts. MnT Future designed and engineered all of it: a player app, a venue-owner app, a web app, a real-time FastAPI backend with marketplace payments, and an embedded AI booking agent in WhatsApp. It's the same architecture a US marketplace needs: real-time inventory, split payouts, and an AI agent that transacts safely.
Two sides, one platform.
Turf and sports-venue booking in India was fragmented: phone calls, double bookings, no real discovery, and owners running operations on WhatsApp and paper. Players had nowhere to find venues, matches or teammates in one place. LOBBI had to solve both sides at once: a consumer-grade booking experience for players, and a full operations platform for venue owners, with money moving safely in real time on both ends.
A senior-led path from idea to live.
Discovery & architecture
We mapped both journeys: player and venue owner, then designed the data model, the real-time layer and the payment flow before writing feature code.
Two-sided build
Shipped in parallel: a player app for discovery, booking and social; an owner app and dashboard for operations, pricing and payouts.
Real-time & payments
WebSocket availability, Redis-backed slot locking and Cashfree payments/settlements: the hard, money-moving core that has to be correct under load.
Launch & iterate
Shipped to Google Play and lobbi.in, then layered in matchmaking, tournaments, coaching and chat.
What did the architecture buy?
LOBBI runs three apps on one shared backend. Two-phase Redis locking makes double bookings impossible under concurrent demand, Cashfree Easy Split moves marketplace money with zero manual reconciliation, and a read-only Claude agent takes bookings in WhatsApp: every action confirmed by a one-time signed link, so the AI never writes to the database.
A consumer app and an operations platform.
For players
- Venue discovery, filtering and instant slot booking
- Book, cancel & check availability over WhatsApp: AI agent
- Matchmaking: open games with auto-balanced teams and Glicko-2 skill ratings
- Social feed, encrypted DMs and group chat
- Coaching bookings with QR check-in
- Tournaments with registration and live brackets
- Player profile with analytics and highlights
For venue owners
- Multi-turf slot config: per-sport mapping, 15 to 120 min durations, overnight slots
- Two-phase Redis locking: soft + hard locks, zero double bookings
- Dynamic pricing engine: recurring (weekday/weekend) and one-time (festival) rules
- Real-time availability via WebSockets: live, no refresh
- Hold rules: recurring maintenance, one-time blocks, exclusion dates
- Cashfree Easy Split: auto platform fee + GST, net payout to bank
- Settlements & payouts: capture → split → settle → bank, with UTR history
- Smart refunds: tiered policy, refund-splits, auto-recovery of stuck refunds
What we shipped, on screen.
Venue-owner dashboard
Bookings, occupancy, revenue and payouts in one operations cockpit.
Player experience
Discover venues, book slots, find matches and connect with the community.
Coaching
Book sessions, subscribe to packages, and check in with QR.
Where the hard problems were.
The parts that make LOBBI hold up under real, concurrent, money-moving load.
AI WhatsApp booking agent
A read-only Claude agent lets players find venues, check availability, book and cancel right inside WhatsApp: each change confirmed by a one-time signed link, so the AI never touches the database.
Two-phase slot locking
Redis-backed soft + hard locks eliminate double-bookings even under concurrent demand.
Real-time everywhere
WebSocket-driven live availability and chat: instant updates across every viewer, no refresh.
Dynamic pricing engine
Recurring and one-time rules let owners surge on weekends and discount off-peak automatically.
Multi-app architecture
Two React Native apps and a React web app on one shared FastAPI backend: a single source of truth.
Auto-split payments
Cashfree Easy Split deducts platform fee + GST and routes net payouts to each venue's bank: settlements and tiered refunds, fully automated.
Skill-based matchmaking
Glicko-2 ratings and auto-balanced teams keep open games fair and competitive.
Why we chose each piece, and what it bought LOBBI.
Every technology earned its place by solving a specific problem better than the alternatives.
FastAPI (Python)
Used for: The async API and WebSocket server behind both apps and the web.
Advantage: Handles thousands of concurrent real-time connections efficiently, with fast, typed development for complex booking and payment logic.
Redis
Used for: Two-phase slot locking (soft + hard) and hot-path caching.
Advantage: Atomic in-memory locks make double-booking impossible under concurrent demand; sub-millisecond reads keep availability instant.
WebSockets
Used for: Live slot availability and real-time chat.
Advantage: Every viewer sees a slot lock or free up instantly: higher booking conversion, with none of the load of polling.
MongoDB
Used for: Venues, slots, bookings, social, chat and tournament data.
Advantage: A flexible document model lets fast-evolving features (social, coaching, tournaments) ship without rigid schema migrations.
Cashfree Easy Split
Used for: Player payments, platform/venue split, GST, settlements, payouts and refunds.
Advantage: Marketplace money moves correctly and transparently: venues get net payouts to bank automatically, refunds deduct the right share, zero manual reconciliation.
Claude (Anthropic) + WhatsApp Cloud API
Used for: An AI agent that handles venue search, availability, booking and cancellation in WhatsApp chat.
Advantage: Customers self-serve in the app they already live in, and it's safe by design: the AI is read-only, every booking or cancel is a one-time user-confirmed signed link, with webhook signature verification and prompt-injection defense.
Background workers
Used for: Reminders, no-show handling, settlements and stuck-refund recovery.
Advantage: Operations run themselves and self-heal: failed refunds auto-retry, so owners and players are never left stuck.
React Native + Expo
Used for: The player app and the venue-owner app.
Advantage: Two native iOS + Android apps from one toolchain, shipped fast, with over-the-air updates for quick iteration.
AWS S3
Used for: Media storage: images, highlights and documents.
Advantage: Scalable, low-cost storage and delivery for user-generated content.
What it's built on.
- React Native
- Expo
- expo-router
- NativeWind
- React
- Tailwind CSS
- Radix UI
- FastAPI (Python)
- MongoDB
- Redis
- WebSockets
- Claude (Anthropic)
- WhatsApp Cloud API
- Cashfree Easy Split
- AWS S3
- Firebase (FCM)
The questions buyers ask about this build.
The WhatsApp agent is a read-only Claude agent. It can search venues, check availability and prepare a booking or cancellation, but every state change is executed only when the user taps a one-time signed confirmation link. Add webhook signature verification and prompt-injection defenses, and the AI never touches the database directly.
With two-phase Redis locking: a soft lock holds the slot during checkout, and a hard lock lands only when payment succeeds. Combined with WebSocket-driven live availability, concurrent buyers can't collide: double bookings are structurally impossible, not just unlikely.
Yes, the architecture maps one-to-one. Swap Cashfree Easy Split for Stripe Connect (split payments, payouts, refunds), keep the real-time inventory and locking layer, and the embedded-agent pattern works on any channel: WhatsApp, SMS, or web chat. This build is our production proof for US marketplace and agent-ready commerce work.
Product design, the player app, the venue-owner app, the web app, the FastAPI backend with payments and settlements, and the AI booking agent: one senior team, from architecture to Google Play.
Have a platform like this in mind?
LOBBI is the kind of multi-sided, real-time platform we specialise in. Tell us your idea: we'll show you how we'd architect it.