Building Zoomcar’s Vendor Dashboard from the Ground Up

TL;DR

Zoomcar’s evolution brought in large fleet partners, but the tools weren’t keeping up. So we built a vendor dashboard from scratch: starting with a minimal brief, leveraging AI for early scaffolding, and designing a clean, scalable interface for high-volume operations. The v0 release focused on visibility, clarity, and a single powerful action: car swapping. With positive feedback in hand, v1 is now underway with deeper controls, alerts, and bulk workflows.

The Shift: From Individual Hosts to Fleet Powerhouses

Zoomcar started with individual car owners listing their vehicles. But over time, a new kind of host entered the picture: businesses managing hundreds of cars, each with its own internal hierarchy of managers and operations.

The platform was still trying to speak the same language to solo car owners and to organisations managing fleets of 200+. And that wasn’t working. The “My Cars” tab on the app originally designed for a single car or two crumbled under scale. Hosts couldn’t easily find booking details, pricing setups, or even which cars were live.

We needed a better way to talk to this new user.

The Challenge: Design From Scratch

There was no legacy system to fix, no outdated dashboard to update. This was a true zero-to-one design problem. What we had was a barebones business requirements doc cobbled together from multiple calls with product managers and enterprise clients. That was our north star.

To move faster, I turned to AI. I fed the initial requirements into Claude to get a rough draft of what a functional dashboard might look like. It wasn’t perfect—but it helped me frame the skeleton and clarify what questions still needed answers. From there, the design process kicked off in earnest.

If you're curious about how I used AI throughout the project - from ideation to early layouts. I’ve documented it all in this companion case study.

v0: Laying the Foundation

For our first release, we intentionally kept the dashboard lightweight but powerful where it mattered. The goal was to build trust, prove value, and make large-scale data manageable.

Key Features in v0:

• Three Core Views: Just the essentials - Booking List, Car List, and Pricing List.
• Read-Only Mode: No accidental updates. The dashboard was view-only, except for one crucial action...
• The Gamechanger: Swap Car Earlier, if a host couldn’t fulfill a booking, Zoomcar reassigned it elsewhere. But fleet operators have depth. Now, they could simply swap the booking to another car in their own fleet. One click. No more lost revenue. No more hassle.
• Multi-User Functionality Organizations aren’t monolithic. Our clients had their own ops managers, zonal leads, and fleet heads. So we introduced multi-user access, letting them manage data based on their internal hierarchy.

The Interface: Clean Data, No Drama

Each of the three primary views was designed with clarity and speed in mind:

• Booking List: Smart filters, tag-based statuses, and all relevant booking info at a glance.
• Car List: Visual status indicators for each car (e.g., HD enabled, booking status, address), with all essential metadata front and center.
• Pricing List: Two powerful views - standard and time-slab based, accessible via a simple toggle. Fleet managers could now view pricing by duration, see smart pricing opt-ins, and evaluate subscription offerings in seconds.

Under the Hood: Designed for Admins, Not Just Interfaces

This wasn’t just about pretty screens. We designed for real-world workflows:

• Batch visibility across geographies
• Minimal visual clutter for massive datasets
• Data refresh without full reloads
• One-click filters for operational flags (like cars with HD disabled)

And most importantly: speed without confusion.

What We Heard

v0 is currently live with key partners. While we’re still waiting on deeper usage analytics, the initial demos with stakeholders were validating.

What’s Next: Building v1 With Feedback in Mind

We’re already in motion for the next version. Based on early conversations, here’s what we’re cooking:

• Pause Logic for Swaps: Automatically apply a pause when a car is swapped, editable by admin.
• Fare Breakups: More transparency in potential earnings.
• Toggle for Car Preferences (Read-Only): Let vendors audit all their car rules and constraints in one place.
• Availability Calendar: So admins can track upcoming pauses.
• Real-time Alerts: For everything from poor pricing to soon-to-expire listings.
• Bulk Onboarding: An Excel-style interface to upload 100s of cars at once.

The Takeaway

This dashboard wasn’t just about showing data, it was about respecting the people behind that data. Fleet hosts aren’t just users, they’re businesses, with operations and urgency. By speaking their language, giving them control, and designing for scale (not just aesthetics), we’ve taken the first real step in turning Zoomcar into a platform that works with them and not around them.

We're just getting started.

You can email me @ shivanisingh54996@gmail.com or reach out to me on X / LinkedIn