This engagement grew from a website migration into a complete media ecosystem. We migrated the archive, rebuilt the editorial system, improved search visibility and analytics accuracy, shipped a mobile app and launched a B2B data platform — a good example of how 91Technologies takes a business from a single website to a multi-product digital platform.
The challenge
Indian Food Times is an independent news brand covering India’s food industry. Its old website could no longer keep up with a growing newsroom, and the business wanted to grow beyond articles into data, subscriptions and a mobile audience.
- An outgrown website. The legacy Laravel site was slow to update, hard to optimise for search and offered little control over workflow and permissions.
- A real newsroom workflow. Writers, editors, SEO and ad teams each needed their own access, approvals, scheduling and an audit trail.
- Search and discovery. Traffic depends on Google Search, Discover and Google News — so speed, structured data and clean indexing were critical.
- Trustworthy numbers. View counts were inflated by bots and crawlers, which made reporting and advertiser conversations unreliable.
- Beyond articles. The brand wanted a mobile app and a B2B product — directories, market data and reports — without disturbing the news site.
Our solution
We built a custom publishing platform rather than adapting an off-the-shelf CMS, and designed it as separate products that share only the server.
- News website. A server-rendered Next.js site that loads fast, regenerates in the background and ships news-grade SEO out of the box.
- Editorial CMS. A role-based admin for the newsroom — workflow, scheduling, versions, media, categories, comments, polls, ads, push and analytics in one place.
- One API. An Express/TypeScript API with PostgreSQL serves the website, the CMS and the mobile app with about 160 routes.
- Android app. A Flutter app with a Shorts feed, stories, push notifications and sign-in, built on the same API.
- IFT Intelligence. A separate B2B platform with its own database, directories, reports, daily mandi price data, AI-assisted briefings and plan-based subscriptions.
- Reliable operations. Scheduled jobs, backups, monitoring and a documented deployment routine keep everything running.
What we built
Editorial workflow
Draft → review → approve → publish or schedule, with assignments, version history and one-click rollback.
Mobile-friendly editor
A rich-text editor with a keyboard-docked toolbar, embeds, resizable images and a sticky save bar for writing on phones.
Roles & security
11 staff roles and 19 permissions, two-factor login, trusted devices, a deletion-approval flow and an audit log.
SEO for news
NewsArticle schema, Google News sitemap, RSS, IndexNow, author pages and AI-readable llms.txt files.
Web Stories & Shorts
Full-screen web stories on the site and an Inshorts-style Shorts feed in the Android app.
Reader accounts
Email and Google sign-in with One Tap, account linking, comments, likes and share buttons.
Ad manager
Banner, HTML and AdSense campaigns by placement, device and date — on the website and in the app.
Push notifications
Send alerts to website subscribers and app devices; tapping a push opens the right story.
Accurate analytics
Bot-filtered view counts, traffic sources, devices and locations, alongside Google Analytics 4.
Mandi Price Tracker
Daily wholesale commodity prices with sparklines and a Kitchen Cost Index, shown on the news homepage too.
Company directories
B2B directories for companies, franchises and suppliers, plus market insights and downloadable reports.
AI market briefings
AI-written daily briefings and ingredient spotlights grounded in web search, with strict cost caps.
Subscriptions
Plan-based access to premium reports and profiles with online checkout.
Polls, newsletters & contests
Poll widgets, newsletter capture and landing-page voting contests with entries and end dates.
Results & achievements
- Built on an indexed PostgreSQL architecture designed to scale to millions of articles — today it already manages 1,600+ stories and about 20,000 media files with fast search and listings.
- Replaced a legacy Laravel website with a custom platform and migrated about 1,400 published articles with their history.
- Editors work in a role-based CMS with a full workflow — draft, review, approve, publish or schedule — and every save creates a version that can be rolled back. Scheduled stories go live automatically within 30 seconds.
- Built for Google Discover, Google News and AI search: NewsArticle structured data, a Google News sitemap, RSS, IndexNow pings on every publish, author pages and llms.txt files.
- Fixed analytics accuracy: page views are now counted only from real browsers, ignoring bots, crawlers and AI agents, alongside Google Analytics 4 with consent mode.
- Rewrote the article editor so writers can format long stories on a phone, with a toolbar that rides above the on-screen keyboard.
- Launched a native Android app with Shorts, web stories, push notifications and Google sign-in, using the same API as the website.
- IFT Intelligence tracks wholesale mandi prices automatically every day and mirrors the live price widget on the news homepage.
- AI-assisted daily market briefings run with capped web searches and cost controls, so the feature stays affordable.
- Reader accounts (email and Google), comments with moderation, likes, sharing, polls and contest landing pages keep readers engaged.
- Separate products run side by side with their own databases, settings and services, plus two-factor staff login and a full audit log.