NEST – Student Marketplace & Startup Innovation Hub

NEST is a full-stack web platform designed to empower students to start, manage, and grow their small businesses within a college ecosystem. It combines a peer-to-peer marketplace for buying and selling products with a collaborative hub for student startup ventures.

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🌐 Live Website: https://www.nestplatform.website/

Table of Contents

• About the Project
• Features
• Tech Stack
• Project Structure
• Getting Started
  • Prerequisites
  • Installation (Local)
  • Running with Docker
• Module Overviews
• Environment Variables
• Contributing
• Team

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About the Project

NEST was built as an academic initiative by a 4-member student team. The platform addresses a real gap in college ecosystems: there's no centralized, trusted space for students to buy/sell products, share entrepreneurial ideas, or collaborate on ventures. NEST solves this by bringing together a marketplace, venture showcase, and admin management layer in one unified platform.

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Features

• Authentication – Secure JWT-based login and registration with bcrypt password hashing; role-based access for Buyers, Sellers, and Admins.
• Buyer Module – Browse listings, search products, place orders, and communicate with sellers in real time.
• Seller Module – Create and manage product listings, track orders, view AI-powered sales analytics, and chat with buyers.
• OTP Order Verification – Order completion is secured via a one-time password sent to the buyer's email through Nodemailer, which the seller enters to confirm delivery.
• Real-time Chat – Socket.io-powered messaging between buyers and sellers on the marketplace, plus a dedicated team chat channel for venture collaborators.
• Ventures Hub – Post and explore student startup ideas, connect with collaborators, and communicate via built-in team chat.
• Admin Dashboard – Manage users, listings, and platform-wide settings from a dedicated admin interface.
• ML Recommendation Engine – Python FastAPI microservice using Sentence-BERT (all-MiniLM-L6-v2) to rank similar products by semantic cosine similarity, with graceful fallback to rating-based sorting.
• Sentiment Analysis – NLP microservice powered by cardiffnlp/twitter-roberta-base-sentiment (RoBERTa) that classifies reviews, computes seller happiness scores (0–10), and extracts positive/negative themes.
• Sales Analytics Dashboard – JS-based forecasting engine using linear regression (with R² confidence scoring) for 7-day, 30-day, and 3-month revenue predictions, plus Gemini AI-powered business suggestions.
• Redis Caching – Redis is used to cache sessions and frequently accessed data, reducing database load and improving response times.
• Nginx Reverse Proxy – Production-ready routing between frontend, backend, and ML services.
• Docker Support – Fully containerized for consistent development and production deployments.

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Tech Stack

Layer	Technology
Frontend	React.js, Tailwind CSS
Backend	Node.js, Express.js
Database	MongoDB
Caching	Redis
Real-time	Socket.io
Authentication	JWT, bcrypt
Email / OTP	Nodemailer
ML Microservices	Python, FastAPI, HuggingFace Transformers
ML Models	all-MiniLM-L6-v2 (Sentence-BERT), cardiffnlp/twitter-roberta-base-sentiment (RoBERTa)
AI Suggestions	Google Gemini API
Reverse Proxy	Nginx
Containerization	Docker, Docker Compose
Dev Tools	Postman, GitHub

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Project Structure

nest-platform/
├── assets/                    # Flow diagrams and design assets (SVG)
│   ├── auth-flow.svg
│   ├── seller-buyer-flow.svg
│   ├── ventures-flow.svg
│   └── admin-pages.svg
│
├── frontend/                  # React.js client application
│   └── ...
│
├── backend/                   # Node.js / Express REST API
│   └── ...
│
├── ml-services/               # Python ML microservice
│   └── ...
│
├── nginx/                     # Nginx reverse proxy config
│   └── ...
│
├── docker-compose.yml         # Production Docker Compose config
├── docker-compose.dev.yml     # Development Docker Compose config
├── package.json               # Root-level scripts / workspace config
└── README.md

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Getting Started

Prerequisites

Make sure you have the following installed:

• Node.js (v18+)
• npm or yarn
• MongoDB (local instance or MongoDB Atlas)
• Redis (local instance or Redis Cloud)
• Docker & Docker Compose (for containerized setup)
• Python 3.9+ (for ML services)

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Installation (Local)

1. Clone the repository

git clone https://github.com/Aditi-Mane/nest-platform.git
cd nest-platform

2. Set up the backend

cd backend
npm install

Create a .env file inside the backend/ directory (see Environment Variables).

npm run dev

The backend server will start at http://localhost:5000.

3. Set up the frontend

cd ../frontend
npm install
npm start

The React app will start at http://localhost:3000.

4. Set up ML services (optional)

cd ../ml-services
pip install -r requirements.txt
python app.py

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Running with Docker

NEST includes Docker Compose configurations for both development and production environments.

Development:

docker-compose -f docker-compose.dev.yml up --build

Production:

docker-compose up --build

This will spin up all services (frontend, backend, MongoDB, Redis, ML services, and Nginx) in isolated containers.

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Module Overviews

Authentication Flow

Role-based registration and login for Students (Buyers/Sellers) and Admins. JWT tokens are issued on login and verified for protected routes. Passwords are hashed using bcrypt.

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Seller–Buyer Module

Sellers can create and manage product listings. Buyers can browse the marketplace, search by category, and place orders. Each user's dashboard reflects their active role.

Real-time Messaging Socket.io powers two distinct chat experiences on the platform. Buyers and sellers can message each other directly about a product or order from within the marketplace. Venture team members have a dedicated group chat channel tied to their venture, enabling async collaboration.

OTP Order Verification When a buyer receives their order, the seller must confirm delivery by entering a one-time password sent to the buyer's email via Nodemailer. This prevents fraudulent order-completion claims and adds a layer of trust to every transaction on the platform.

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Ventures Module

Students can publish their startup ideas as venture posts, describe their vision, and invite collaborators. Other students can browse and express interest in joining ventures. Each active venture has a built-in real-time team chat (Socket.io) so members can coordinate without leaving the platform.

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Admin Dashboard

Admins can monitor and moderate the platform — reviewing new listings, managing user accounts, and overseeing activity across the marketplace and ventures hub.

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Environment Variables

Create a .env file in the backend/ directory with the following variables:

# Server
PORT=5000
NODE_ENV=development

# MongoDB
MONGO_URI=mongodb://localhost:27017/nest-platform

# JWT
JWT_SECRET=your_jwt_secret_here
JWT_EXPIRES_IN=7d

# Redis
REDIS_URL=redis://localhost:6379

# Nodemailer (OTP email delivery)
EMAIL_HOST=smtp.gmail.com
EMAIL_PORT=587
EMAIL_USER=your_email@gmail.com
EMAIL_PASS=your_app_password

# ML Service (Python FastAPI)
ML_SERVICE_URL=http://localhost:8000

# Google Gemini AI (optional — falls back to rule-based suggestions if absent)
GEMINI_API_KEY=your_gemini_api_key_here

Never commit your .env file to version control. It is already included in .gitignore.

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Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Here's how to get started:

1. Fork the repository.
2. Create a new branch for your feature or bug fix:

   git checkout -b feature/your-feature-name

3. Commit your changes with a clear message:

   git commit -m "feat: add product search filter"

4. Push to your fork:

   git push origin feature/your-feature-name

5. Open a Pull Request against the main branch.

Please make sure your code follows the existing code style and that all existing functionality still works before submitting a PR.

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Team

NEST is developed by a 4-member student team as part of an academic initiative.

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Made with ❤️ by students, for students.