Peeled Onion — Billing Software

Overview

Peeled Onion is a free billing software built for small businesses and local shops. It started with a simple observation my friend runs a cafe and needed billing software. The existing options were either expensive, had terrible UI, or both. PetPooja charges ₹20,000 a year. Local alternatives charge ₹5,000 a year with interfaces so complex that uneducated staff needed a month to learn them.

I saw the gap. I also wanted to learn vibe coding. So I built it.

The Problem

Small business owners in India do not need powerful software. They need simple software. The billing tools that exist were built for restaurant chains and enterprises, then sold down to small shops. The complexity never got removed.

The real cost was not the subscription fee. It was the one month it took every new employee to learn the product. For a cafe owner managing 3-4 staff, that is a real business problem.

My Role

Everything. Product design, full stack development using React and Java, deployment on Cloudflare, SEO, GEO, AEO, JSON-LD, Google and Meta ads, and direct sales.

The Design Principle

The entire UI was designed around one constraint an uneducated staff member should be able to use it on day one without training.

This changed every decision. No complex navigation. No settings buried three levels deep. No jargon. Every action on the most likely path, everything else hidden until needed.

Building It

Built with React and Java. Deployed on Cloudflare. I used Cursor and Antigravity to accelerate development, writing and iterating on code faster than I could have done manually.

This project taught me that vibe coding is real. With the right AI tools, a designer can build and ship a full product without a dedicated engineering team.

Getting Users — The Hard Part

Design was the easy part. Getting users was hard.

I went directly to local shops and cafes, walked in, explained the product and asked them to try it. Two users came from Meta ads with a small budget. The rest came from direct outreach.

I learned SEO, GEO, AEO and JSON-LD to build organic discovery over time. Set up Google Tag Manager for tracking. Ran low budget Google and Meta ads to test what messaging worked.

The biggest lesson was not about design or code. It was about sales. Sitting across from a shop owner and explaining why they should trust a free product from a stranger is a completely different skill from designing an interface.

What I Learned

Building Peeled Onion changed how I think about product design.

Pixel perfect does not matter as much as I thought. What matters is shipping, watching real people use it, and updating based on what they actually need. The version in your head is never the version that works. The version that works comes from real usage.

I also learned that a designer who can build, ship and sell is fundamentally different from a designer who only designs. Every decision I make at PrivateCircle now has a layer of real product ownership behind it.

Result

Built and shipped a full product solo from design to deployment. Acquired first 10 users through direct sales and paid ads. Zero budget marketing using SEO, GEO and AEO. Currently live and free for all users.