About Project
I worked on the Jio Seller Central platform (SCP), where I was responsible for the UI/UX design of how new sellers join. My main objective was to simplify a complex process: instead of sellers joining each Jio platform separately, I designed a unified onboarding module. This new design aims to make it quicker and easier for sellers to get started, removing redundant steps and boosting overall efficiency.
My Role
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Researcher
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Ideation
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UI & Prototyping
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User Testing
Timeline
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12 weeks
Team
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Yamini Jain (Researcher)
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Rahul Kumar (Product designer)
ABOUT COMPANY
AJIO Business
AJIO Business is a B2B (business-to-business) e-commerce platform by Reliance that connects small and medium-sized fashion retailers across India with manufacturers, wholesalers, and brands, enabling them to source apparel and lifestyle products online.
AJIO Business Model:
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It primarily operates as a marketplace, earning revenue by:
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Taking a commission on sales made through its platform.
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Potentially charging fees for logistics, fulfilment, and other value-added services offered to sellers and buyers.
Key Problems with Seller Onboarding at Reliance
Slow Onboarding:
The old VMS platform for Ajio Business took 15-30+ days to onboard sellers. This was too long and made sellers give up, especially since competitors could do it in about 7 days.

Repeated Effort for Multiple Channels: 

Sellers had to go through the same long onboarding process for each different Reliance sales channel, even if they were selling the same products. They also relied on many different third-party tools.

Too Much Repeat Verification:
If a seller's form was rejected after L2 or L3 checks, once they made corrections, it had to go all the way back to the onboarding team for L1 approval again. This caused the whole process to restart.
The Goal
How might we design an intuitive and efficient onboarding ecosystem that empowers sellers across diverse sales channels within Reliance Retail to seamlessly expand their business reach, while providing the operational flexibility and control required for individual channel needs?
Business Goal
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Improve acquisition and active seller count across channels
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Reduction in Go live Onboarding TAT
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TAT for verifications/ approvals
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Minimising the time and effort required for sellers to set up multiple accounts and list products
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Reduced drop off
Empathize
Research Goal
Streamline seller onboarding process, by uncovering & addressing front-end and back-end issues within & cross channels, creating a user-centered design solution roadmap while improving overall satisfaction of sellers and back end approvers.
Research Approach
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Redesigning the system, the business decided to first focus on VMS requirements. This approach also ensures flexibility for gradual customization in the future.
Understanding the internal team and the existing organizational structure
This comprehensive internal analysis was critical for designing the Jio Seller Central (SCP) platform's onboarding module. By mapping out the various teams involved – from business development to compliance and logistics – and their interdependencies, I identified key points of friction and redundancy in the previous fragmented onboarding process.
Mapped the stakeholders involved throughout the journey to understand their roles and responsibility better
Key terminology for better comprehension
List of all the teams involved for the onboarding process
Current onboarding process time line
User Interview
Some common key topics and questions for discussion guide:
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Role and responsibility in the onboarding process
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People and process involved in the process before and after them
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Importance of the tasks in the processes
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Major issues faces in the journey
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Current way of overcoming the issues
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Expectation from the platform
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Experience on other platforms, what works/ doesn't work there
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Motivation and triggers
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Post submission process, challenges & barriers
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Limitations & Scope of automations, elimination and/ or parallelisation of tasks
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User perspective on unified platform
Analysis & Synthesis process ?
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Marked problems/ issues in red and open points for focused interviews in blue.
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Problems common across stages in the journey were marked in green making them the most critical
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Majority of the problems were uncovered between Brand addition and the Level 1 approval process
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1. Problems before Registration
Key Insights & Opportunities
2. Problems during seller Registration
Key Insights & Opportunities
Internal team & sellers must complete three forms
3. Problems during approvals
Key Insights & Opportunities
Heuristic evaluation
The goal is to proactively find and fix issues that could make the registration process difficult, confusing, or frustrating for new sellers, without needing to involve actual users in initial testing.
Pre-registration
Head of business details(HOB)
Key things looked for on a seller registration form
Visibility of system status, Match between system and the real world, User control and freedom, Consistency and standards, Error prevention, Recognition rather than recall, Flexibility and efficiency of use, Aesthetic and minimalist design, Help users recognize, diagnose, and recover from errors,Help and documentation:
Broader Problems with the form
Insight
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Unclear field labels, poor form structure, confusing UI and lack of instructions make navigation difficult, leading to incorrect entries, document errors, and increased drop-offs.
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Strict character limits at field level prevent sellers from entering complete details, causing rejections and logistical issues.
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Limited document acceptance criteria require sellers to modify official documents or submit additional declarations.
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Outdated or irrelevant information in forms leads to unnecessary data entry, follow-ups, and delays.
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Redundant manual data entry even after document uploads increases errors and inefficiencies.
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No visibility on pincode serviceability leads to unsuccessful registrations and avoidable rejections.
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Missing confirmations after auto-verification/ validation leaves sellers uncertain about their progress.
Competitive Research
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Helped strengthened the case for building a system aligned with industry standards and user expectations for procedural efficiency and user-centric onboarding experience
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Studied their registration form and onboarding processes, extracting valuable insights for design recommendations
Seller Persona
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Experienced E-commerce Seller
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New E-commerce seller
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Approver at L1 level
Define
Workshop: Internal Stakeholder Alignment
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Initial problem prioritisation based on research findings done was followed by 2nd level prioritisation and problem re-defining exercise for the solution roadmap.
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It was conducted in a 2-day workshop involving key stakeholders (Product, Engineering, Business, Design) to prioritise P0s and P1s for enhancing the new streamlined onboarding process.
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Challenges:
- Limited availability during the workshop, hindering participation.- Lack of clarity among available participants.
- Prioritisation focus shifted from user issues to business decisions, challenges in reaching consensus
Problem Prioritisation
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Quick solutions, designs, possible system & operational changes were captured on sticky notes during brainstorming sessions for later use in the ideation phase
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Identified topics requiring further clarity were documented for quick user callings.
Multi-Tenant - NEW
To enable multiple businesses under Reliance Retail umbrella to onboard same brand authorised sellers/brand sellers for their respective storefront via JIO VMS for achieving the following:
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Enabled multi-business seller onboarding for Reliance Retail's storefronts via Jio VMS.
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Implemented global, customizable data collection with tenant-level viewing.
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Ensured independent tenant functionality under a single seller account.
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Managed global and tenant-exclusive approval flows.
Provided customizable Terms of Trade for JIT and a default for Drop-ship.
UX Scope:
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Migrating seller from one tenant to another
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Enabling seller registration over multiple tenants with single account management
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Defining approver flows at one global
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Defining Change Request flows for multi-tenant data.
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Cover the exception cases on tenant level
Standardizing Seller Data:
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We've finalised the list of common details required for every seller across all our platforms. These details are divided into two parts: master data (which is core to the seller) and channel-specific data (which varies based on where they're selling).
Seamless Approval Process
Ideate
Redefined Problem statements - HMW
Quick brainstorming/ rough solutions : Diverge Phase
Affinity Mapping
Brainstorming on flows
Information Architecture
Approver Flow
Design
Low level wireframes
Ideation Workshop - crazy 8
Final UI Designs
Before Registration
Landing page
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Previously, sellers lacked a dedicated Landing Page to explore AJIO's business platform features and services.
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Interested sellers had to contact RELIANCE AGENTS for onboarding, which often resulted in missed opportunities with potential contributors.
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Our sales team primarily targeted established brands for onboarding, making the process inefficient.
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To improve this, we implemented a multi-tenant approach, enabling sellers to access all tenants through a streamlined approval process.
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This change not only enhances accessibility but also fosters a more inclusive environment for new sellers.
Lead form
When the user clicks on 'Start Selling', on AJIO website a lead form will appear. Initially, we discussed having a single comprehensive form for users to create their profiles by entering details such as tax information, bank details, MSME registration, brands, and business location. However, this process proved to be quite lengthy.
Share GST number and contact no​
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Choose the business channel you wish to sell through.
Add all the brands you have available.
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1. Quick Lead Form: First up, users will fill out a quick lead form to grab some key info:
- Just the GST Number (to keep the spammers at bay)
- Brand Names (to check out what value the seller brings to the platform)
- Sales Channels they’re interested in (like AJIO, Tira, etc.)
2. Easy Profile Setup: Once they submit the lead form, the platform will walk them through a registration form where they can upload all the necessary documents.
3. Follow-Up System: If a seller drops off during the process, we’ll have a follow-up system ready to reach out based on the brands they showed interest in.
Seller Registration form
Login screen
Get started to fill the registration form
AJIO dashboard: Start registration
If a user abandons the registration form, they have the option to continue from where they left off.
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When users click 'Continue', they will be directed to the Ajio dashboard.
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To streamline the experience, we’re temporarily hiding other tabs except home tab, allowing users to concentrate solely on completing the registration form.
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Users have the flexibility to take breaks; they can log back in at any time and resume exactly where they left off.
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Our goal is to motivate users to complete the form in one session, while ensuring that returning to the process is hassle-free.
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We also provide helpful tooltips throughout the form to guide users and answer common questions.
Registration Form - Tax, Bank and MSME details
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Tax details
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Previously, GST authentication was not implemented.
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The current design includes verification of GST. We are now displaying essential details linked to the GST number, such as: Business Name, Business Type, Address, PAN Number
Bank details
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Users previously had to enter their name for bank details, which often led to errors. Incorrect names resulted in user registration forms being rejected due to discrepancies with bank records. 

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Some business names were too lengthy, causing users to be unable to input their full name within the character limit of the form. This ultimately led to further rejections, emphasizing the need for clearer guidance on name entry.
Brand addition
Before
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Prior to the registration form, if a brand is new to Reliance, the seller must provide all necessary details to the sales officer. Only after this submission will the brand be visible in the registration form. Without completing this step, the seller will not be able to select the brand.
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After
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The process of adding a brand in the new registration form is designed to be seamless, allowing users to either select from a list of pre-onboarded brand names or add a custom brand by uploading the necessary authorized documents. This addition of a new brand will run concurrently with the approval process for the seller profile in the Reliance system.
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Add business Location/ Warehouse
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In the business location section tab, user can easily add or remove your business locations. To add a business location, user has to provide tax details, warehouse address, and bank information.
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Add bank and invoice details
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Pickup and return address
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After user add your first warehouse, bank details will be pre-filled and edited for 2nd warehouse. If the business location is in a different state, you'll need to enter new GST details in accordance with government regulations.
Additional Info and terms of trade (TOT)
Terms of trade are contract alignments with a seller for doing trade in a business model. It varies for each business model and could be same or different among different sellers in one business model.
Before
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Unclear field title in TOT: The confusing wording of the required information field leads to inaccurate details and mismatches with supporting documents, potentially causing rejection if not verified earlier.
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Manual process: Team find it difficult to fill details from TOT/ mail and get it signed by seller offline, hence leading to mistakes in the form.
Note: Majority of sellers are onboarded at default margins, however, the margin is required to be updated manually, failing which causes friction
After
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Sellers will be onboarded with standard margins for each tenant. If they choose to reject these margins, they will not be able to sell on that particular sales channel. However, there is an option to customize the Terms of Trade (TOT) for high-end sellers or major brands. In such cases, the margin will need to be updated manually.
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Missing TOT records in VMS system: The VMS system lacks records of TOTs, which must be shared separately during L2 verification. As a result, there is no documented evidence of a brand being onboarded with agreed terms.
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Add additional details if any sales channel needed
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Use case: seller reject TOT
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Use case: seller share reason for rejection
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Status of various sales channels accepted or declined by the seller.
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Seller reviewing default terms of trade(TOT)
Post Submission: Registration form
Welcome to the dashboard homepage!
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As a first-time user, you'll see all the tabs available for exploration. Each tab will guide you through the next steps, such as adding your product catalog and awaiting profile approval.
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Homepage:
Displays application status and a button to add the product catalog, leading to the product tab.
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Profile Tab: If your user profile hasn't been approved yet, it will display a message indicating that your profile is under review. This is a prompt for users to begin adding their product catalog.
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Approval Process
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Level: 01
Document Verification
L1 Approver dashboard:
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As an L1 Approver, verify all uploaded documents.
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Validate inputs against these documents.
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Check if a seller has rejected the Terms of Trade (TOT). Call back the potential seller
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If a seller has only filled out the lead form and not the registration form, the L1 approver can follow up with the potential seller.
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Use case: A comment has been added for rejection of tax details. The user has the option to remove it or edit it to provide additional information.
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All business locations
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Approve pop-up
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Reject pop-up
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Seller Profile details: Approver can view all their tax details, bank information, and MSME details in one convenient location in one glance. When an approver clicks on any document, it will open in a new browser tab for easy verification. There's no need for multiple clicks to access each section.
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Each section includes a specific call-to-action for adding comments if any errors are found in the details. Once the approver provides a reason for rejection, they can save their input.
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Brand verification: Approver can add comments regarding any inaccuracies in the details. An approver will see a red mark indicating where all rejection comments are noted.
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Single business locations details
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Custom TOT by L1: For Large-Scale Brand Integration
Inviting large-Scale Brands
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We have a dedicated tab for sellers. Our sales officers connect with major brands to onboard them onto our AJIO platform. Each brand will have a separate login link that allows them to manage their onboarding process or have it done on their behalf. Below are the screens that appear once the registration reaches the Level 1 approver for creating a customized Terms of Trade as per the agreed terms.
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L1 Approver landing page
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L1 Approver --> Custom leads
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Additional comment: This is added by the sales officer after creating profile, such as the agreed-upon Terms of Trade sheet.
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In the TOT tab, the approver can create a TOT based on the agreed terms after internal discussions. Once finalized, they will send it to the seller for acceptance.
TOT Creation -->
Step 01
Custom Margin
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Custom margin at AJIO Business refers to the specific commission rates and other charges that a seller agrees upon with AJIO for selling their products.It is unique combination of fees (commission, shipping, payment gateway, etc.) that apply to your particular products and categories, influencing your final profit after selling on the platform. It's essentially your agreed-upon cost structure for doing business with AJIO.
The default view displays the overall margin. If a user wishes to set a custom margin for a specific brand category, they can select that category and adjust the margin accordingly.
Custom Margin: Easily upload margins in bulk by using an Excel or CSV file. If you don't have a template, you can download one to facilitate your bulk upload.
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Custom margin (Manually)
Category level
Users will be selecting a category, which consists of multiple sub-categories. They can manually add one sub-category at a time.
Select exact multiple sub-categories. They can select complete men category or ethnic
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Choose charge type (percentage or commission), margin, start date, and end date.
Charge type
Brand level
Choose a brand. User can pick one at a time.
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Add margin and date range
Category & Brand level
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To add brand and category level margin, user has to follow three steps: first, choose the brand; second, select the corresponding category for that brand; and finally, set the margin and date range.
Select brand
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Select category associated with this brand
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Add margin and validation date range
Step 02
SCM charges (Supply Chain Management charges)
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At AJIO Business, SCM charges are mainly the logistics fees sellers pay for AJIO to handle shipping and returns of their products.
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This mainly includes:
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Shipping/Logistics Fees: Charges for picking up products from the seller and delivering them to the customer. These vary by product size, weight, and delivery distance.
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Returns Handling Fees: Costs associated with processing customer returns, including reverse logistics (picking up the item from the customer) and potentially quality checks.
Step 03
Incentives slabes
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"Incentives slab" at AJIO Business for sellers typically refers to various ways AJIO encourages and rewards sellers beyond the basic commission structure. While AJIO primarily operates on a commission-based model, these "incentives" are designed to boost seller performance, sales, and overall engagement with the platform.
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Lower commission rates for higher sales or good performance.
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Increased visibility/marketing support during sales events.
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Operational benefits like efficient logistics.
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User can edit slab within any row or column
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They can also add a new row to expand the slab to a personalized bracket.
Step 04
Other Terms
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The "Other Terms" section in the image refers to additional, specific conditions and agreements beyond the general categories of Custom Margin, SCM Charges, and Incentive Slab, that are part of the "Terms of Trade (TOT)" between AJIO Business and a seller.
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User can edit slab within any row or column
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They can also add a new row or edit any type of input
Step 05
Review & save
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The "Other Terms" section in the image refers to additional, specific conditions and agreements beyond the general categories of Custom Margin, SCM Charges, and Incentive Slab, that are part of the "Terms of Trade (TOT)" between AJIO Business and a seller.
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Step 06
Send custom TOT to seller
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The approver should click 'Send to Seller' to request their approval.
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Level: 02
Serviceability Check
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At AJIO Business, "Serviceability Check" primarily refers to the process of determining whether the logistics and delivery services are available for a particular pin-code (or palace of business location).
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For a seller on Reliance as seller, this is crucial because:
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Order Acceptance: Before an order is finalized, System needs to ensure that the product can actually be delivered to the customer's address. If a pincode isn't "serviceable," the order cannot proceed.
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Logistics Planning: AJIO relies on its extensive network of logistics partners. A serviceability check confirms if their partners operate in that specific area to facilitate pickup from the seller and delivery to the customer.
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Customer Experience: It prevents orders from being placed that cannot be fulfilled, avoiding customer disappointment and potential cancellations or returns due to non-delivery.
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L2 Approver dashboard: Serviceability Check
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Clicked on seller profile details
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The Business Location tab has been moved to the second position to facilitate daily serviceability checks for business locations. The approver is required to verify details against a separate file provided by the logistics partner for specific pincodes and take necessary actions.
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The approver needs to verify with logistics whether each business channel is serviceable and then either approve or reject it.
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They also have the option to view the seller's details if they want to know something specific.
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If any warehouse is operational, the approver must give their approval.
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Home and Profile page: Seller
Profile verified and ready for next step
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Profile Rejected
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Brand list: All
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Brand list: Ajio
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Warehouse: All
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Warehouse: Ajio
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Additional Info
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Tenant Switch
Seamless Handoff:
Bringing the Unified Seller Onboarding to Life
This project's success hinged on establishing an exceptionally smooth design-to-development handoff, crucial for implementing the complex, multi-tenant Jio Seller Central platform. My strategy ensured minimal iterations and precise execution, bridging the gap between design vision and technical reality.
Here's how I ensured a streamlined implementation:
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Proactive Developer Partnership (Post Ideation): Engineers were integrated early, right after initial ideation. This collaborative approach allowed us to address technical constraints and integration complexities inherent to the multi-platform onboarding and approval flows upfront, preventing costly roadblocks later in development.
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Transparent Decision-Making: Every design choice, especially regarding global vs. tenant-specific data structures and intricate approval hierarchies, was thoroughly documented and communicated. This fostered continuous alignment and ensured the development team had full clarity on the underlying logic.
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Detailed & Contextual Documentation: Each screen, field, and interaction within the unified seller registration and approver interfaces was meticulously annotated. I detailed specific use cases, exception handling for tenant levels, and the intricate logic behind customizable Terms of Trade, providing developers with a comprehensive blueprint.
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Interactive & Realistic Prototypes: Highly detailed interactive prototypes brought the unified seller journey and approver workflows to life. These tangible assets allowed developers to thoroughly visualize the intended user experience, accelerating their understanding and implementation process.
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Continuous Iterative Collaboration: Throughout the development phase, I maintained a consistent feedback loop with the engineering team. This active collaboration facilitated on-the-fly adjustments and ensured that the final product precisely matched the designed efficiency and user experience for both sellers and internal approvers.
🌼 Thank you 🌼
I appreciate you taking the time to review my work