Ravi Rai
Founder & Lead Developer at buildbyRaviRai · Noida, India
About Ravi
I'm Ravi Rai. I founded buildbyRaviRaiin 2021 as a small freelance operation. Five years later, we've grown into a senior team that ships production-grade web apps, mobile apps, and e-commerce stores for clients across India, USA, Canada, UK, and UAE — 24+ projects delivered to date.
I'm the technical lead on every engagement. That means you talk directly to the person writing your code — no account managers, no junior rotations, no comms tax. My team and I cover the full stack: Next.js / React / Node.js for modern web apps, PHP / Laravel for backends, WordPress and Shopify for content and commerce, React Native and Flutter for mobile.
Outside of client work, I write honestly about freelance development, hiring engineers, and the platform tradeoffs founders face — published on this site and cross-posted to Dev.to, Hashnode, Medium, and Bluesky. The articles are opinionated and based on what we've actually shipped, not what's trending on Twitter.
Areas of Expertise
Experience
Founded and lead a small senior team building production web apps, mobile apps, and e-commerce stores for clients across India, USA, Canada, UK, and UAE. 24+ projects delivered, 18+ long-term clients. Direct technical lead on every engagement.
Built production systems on PHP, Laravel, and early Next.js. Shipped admin dashboards, e-commerce stores, and marketing sites for healthcare, telecom, and B2B research clients.
Credentials
- Founded buildbyRaviRai in 2021 — bootstrapped, profitable from year one
- 24+ shipped projects across healthcare, telecom, fintech, e-commerce, legal, and SaaS
- Clients across 5 countries: India, USA, Canada, UK, UAE
- Author of 11+ in-depth technical articles on Next.js, Shopify, WordPress, Laravel, and freelancing
- Cross-posted regularly on Dev.to, Hashnode, Medium, and Bluesky (~30 syndicated articles)
- Active contributor on Stack Overflow + Quora in Next.js, Laravel, and Shopify topics
Published Articles
9 long-form articles, cross-posted across Dev.to, Hashnode, Medium, and Bluesky.
A practical, opinionated guide for anyone building or operating EV charging stations in India — how the RFID + OCPP stack actually fits together, what hardware works, what breaks in production, and what it costs.
Losing a client always stings. Losing three in a year forces you to look in the mirror. The real, slightly painful, specific lessons from each of the three engagements that ended early — and what we changed because of them.
An honest look at where AI coding tools like Claude Code have genuinely replaced freelance developer work, where they haven't, and how we actually use them on client projects at buildbyRaviRai.
A practical, no-fluff guide for founders and marketing leads on how to hire a freelance web developer in India — what to look for, what to pay, and how to avoid the common mistakes.
A no-nonsense walkthrough for Indian founders launching on Shopify in 2026 — what it actually costs in INR, how to pick a plan, and the 30-point pre-launch checklist we use on every client store.
A real-world comparison from a team that builds on both. When to pick WordPress + WooCommerce, when Shopify wins, and the migration path when you outgrow one.
Headless and custom-built Next.js stores are trendy again. When does that choice make commercial sense versus staying on Shopify — and what does it really cost?
Six months into Next.js 16 in production across five client projects — the wins, the caching traps, and what we would do differently next time.
Patterns we have refined across five production Laravel admin panels — how we structure authorization, data tables, audit logs, and the 'boring parts' that make dashboards maintainable.
Need a freelance developer? Talk to me directly.
Free 30-min consultation. No pitch deck. No sales call. Just an honest conversation about your project.