Vodafone Idea Unifies Partner and Customer Experiences with Liferay PaaS
Key Takeaways
- One platform for partners, customers, and operations.
Using Liferay DXP through Liferay’s Platform-as-a-Service offering, Vodafone Idea (Vi) consolidated multiple systems into a single marketplace ecosystem, leveraging commerce capabilities, unified workflows for partner onboarding, and product approvals. -
Fast partner onboarding and growth.
Vi reduced onboarding time from months to weeks, scaling from 3 to 10+ partners while maintaining quality and compliance through automated approval workflows. -
Seamless digital experience across channels.
Integration between the Vi Marketplace Partner Portal and Vi’s mobile app created a cohesive experience for partners and customers, from discovery to purchase to grievance resolution. -
Scalable performance with cloud reliability.
With autoscaling and monitoring enabled through Liferay PaaS, Vi confidently handles millions of users, ensuring high availability and performance even during peak usage. -
Continuous improvement through analytics.
Vi uses data from grievance and refund workflows to identify service issues, optimize operations, and plan future marketplace enhancements.
Background
Challenges
- Building a scalable e-commerce infrastructure.
Vi needed a robust digital foundation to support a growing partner ecosystem and manage diverse product types. - Creating a seamless, integrated experience.
The company wanted to connect e-commerce features with customer-facing digital experiences across web and mobile, ensuring an engaging journey with smooth transitions. - Streamlining partner onboarding and product management.
Vi required automation to accelerate the partner onboarding process, make it more efficient, and reduce time-to-market for new products while maintaining quality and compliance. - Maintaining performance at scale.
With over 35 million users, performance and reliability were non-negotiable. Vi needed a cloud-based solution that could scale on demand and remain stable during heavy traffic periods. - Gaining actionable insights for continuous improvement.
Vi wanted to leverage analytics to understand user behavior, improve the partner experience, and identify opportunities to optimize processes and offerings.
Implementation
Vi, Liferay, and Liferay-partner TCS collaborated to build the ViShop, following an agile, sprint-based development approach.
Structured Implementation Process:
- Planning & Requirements (1–2 months): Based on joint requirement discussions, TCS defined the Functional Requirements Specification (FRS).
- Design & Sprint Planning (3 weeks): Based on the FRS, Liferay prepared detailed solution designs.
- Development & Testing (multiple sprint cycles): The solution was developed iteratively with continuous testing for integration, performance, and security.
- Go-Live & Support (1 month + ongoing): After user acceptance testing, the solution went live with continuous monitoring, optimization, and maintenance through Liferay DXP PaaS.
How Liferay DXP Drives Scale, Integration, and Efficiency for Vi
- Liferay Commerce. Vi uses Liferay DXP Commerce capabilities to manage their complex product catalog, order processing, and commerce workflows. The platform supports a wide range of product types – including simple, lead, and bundled products – and ensures each goes through a structured approval process before listing. Integrated with the Vi mobile app, the platform delivers a seamless end-user shopping experience, from product discovery to purchase and grievance resolution.
- Workflow Engine. The Liferay DXP workflow engine automates key marketplace processes, such as product approvals, grievance management, and partner onboarding. Custom workflows allow Vi to streamline approvals, reduce manual tasks, and accelerate time-to-market for new offerings. These workflows also support Vi’s operations team in managing partner requests and ensuring smooth day-to-day operations.
- User & Role Management. With Liferay’s user and role management, Vi maintains secure and efficient access for different user groups – including partners, operations teams, and end users. Each role is assigned the right level of permissions, ensuring data protection and clear accountability across the marketplace ecosystem.
- API Integrations. Through robust API integrations, Vi connects the Liferay-based marketplace to external systems like their mobile app, CRM, ERP, and payment gateways. This seamless connectivity allows real-time data exchange, synchronized updates, and consistent user experiences across platforms.
- Cloud. The Vi Marketplace benefits from advanced cloud capabilities such as autoscaling, live performance monitoring, DevOps collaboration tools, automated backups, and disaster recovery. These features ensure reliability, security, and continuous optimization for both partner and customer-facing operations.
- User Experience Design. The portal delivers an end-to-end experience – from partner registration and product submission to customer browsing and purchase on the Vi app. Partners manage listings and track performance; customers enjoy an intuitive shopping experience; and operations teams handle requests and grievances efficiently.
Results
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Expanded partner and product ecosystem. Before adopting Liferay, Vi had only three active partners. Today, over ten partners actively contribute to Vi Shop, with onboarding times reduced from months to weeks.
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Massive growth in non-telco business
- Non-telco offerings grew 38×
- Non-telco transaction volume increased 200×
- Non-telco Transaction value surged 750× (Dec 2023 - Mar 2025) -
Improved customer engagement and experience. Users benefit from a faster, smoother transaction process, while partner and grievance workflows ensure quick resolution and satisfaction.
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Stronger channel performance. Vi’s share of telco revenue through their own digital channels grew 1.7×, reflecting improved self-service adoption and user trust.
Conclusion
Deployed through Liferay PaaS, Vodafone Idea built a unified marketplace that brings together partners, customers, and operations under one scalable, secure, and intelligent platform. Thanks to comprehensive Commerce capabilities, the Vi Marketplace Partner Portal continues to drive rapid partner growth, enhance customer satisfaction, and power Vi’s digital-first future.
Using the same platform, Vi launched Vi Finance in August 25 that enables Vi App users to not only apply for credit cards and personal loans but also invest in fixed deposits. The initial results are vastly positive.
Next Steps: Vi plans to expand their marketplace capabilities through ONDC integration for physical products, launch a B2B marketplace, and enhance partner support journeys within the current Liferay DXP Cloud system.