How Purplle saved $150K by migrating 600 admin panels to low-code

Technical debt is often discussed in abstract terms, but for the engineering team at Purplle, it was a visible and growing burden.

Approximately 600 internal admin panels existed across business functions, including logistics, warehouse management, pricing, customer support, and category operations. These tools were built using multiple stacks, lacked central governance, and in some cases, had not been updated for more than eight years.

Maintaining these panels was time-consuming. Even minor changes took several days. Feature requests accumulated in the backlog. Backend engineers were frequently diverted from core services to produce repetitive frontend code. This setup was inefficient, costly, and no longer viable at scale.

Company at a glance

Purplle is a leading beauty and personal care e-commerce platform based in India. Operating as both a marketplace and a direct-to-consumer brand engine, Purplle fulfils between 50,000 to 100,000 orders daily.

Sector: Beauty e-commerce and marketplace (India)
Order volume: 50,000 – 100,000 daily dispatches
Pre-migration stack: PHP, React.js, Angular, assorted in-house scripts
Low-code platform: DronaHQ (self-hosted)
Migration window: Q4 2023 to Q3 2024 (phased)

The cost of maintaining legacy infrastructure

The challenge was not just the volume of internal tools, but also the fragmentation in their development and maintenance. Ownership varied across teams, architectural decisions were inconsistent, and onboarding new developers was difficult. Any infrastructure upgrade introduced risk to business-critical workflows.

Vivek Parihar, Vice President of Engineering at Purplle, summed it up:

“Moving broadly to low code was a very, very important step. We could not keep patching legacy panels.”

Strategic migration: aligning tools with outcomes

Purplle selected DronaHQ’s self-hosted low-code platform and developed a phased migration strategy that prioritised business impact.

Rather than increasing the developer headcount, the team formed a small, centralised pod of two engineers who assumed complete ownership of the project.

Migration phases and actions:

Chintan Surelia, Engineering Manager at Purplle, noted the significance of this foundation:

“One of the biggest shifts was cultural. Every team had a different way of doing things. We had to centralise development, add structure, and remove decision fatigue. With low-code, we could focus on the logic and not worry about reinventing components or fixing broken UIs.”

Return on investment: quantifiable impact

This initiative significantly improved engineering efficiency:

Development velocity improvements:

Key enablers: operational discipline and engineering principles

The success of this migration was rooted not only in platform adoption but also in engineering rigour:

1. API-first architecture ensured all business logic remained in services, decoupled from UI layers
2. A centralised component library enforced consistent UI and UX across all panels
3. A dedicated team enabled clear ownership, rapid onboarding, and faster feedback cycles
4. Built-in platform guardrails provided version control, staging environments, and role-based access
5. A mindset shift across engineering promoted low code as the default approach

Vivek added perspective on the long-term value:

“Standardisation helped us prevent drift. Previously, we had Angular, React, and even old PHP scripts. A small change used to take days, sometimes a week. Now, a two-person team can manage requests that used to require 10 developers.”

Insights for engineering leaders

Building scalable internal tools is not simply an issue of development speed. It also involves creating robust structures, minimizing context switching, and allocating engineering effort effectively.

Key lessons from Purplle’s migration:

• Low-code tooling is sustainable when integrated with a strong API backbone
• Conduct a usage audit before initiating any migration to identify redundant tools
• Guardrails offer more consistency and efficiency than open-ended guidelines
• Focus on engineering hours saved rather than just the number of tools replaced
• Substantial throughput improvements are achievable when teams reframe their development model

Conclusion

Modern engineering teams are expected to deliver more, often with limited resources. The solution is not always to expand team size. In many cases, enabling existing engineers with the right tooling and operational clarity can unlock far greater efficiency.

Purplle approached its internal tooling problem with structured discipline and a clear goal. As a result, the organization not only reduced costs, but also empowered its engineering function to move with speed and clarity.

“It used to take us three to four days to build and test a basic panel. Now, it’s 15 minutes,” said Chintan. “More importantly, the knowledge transfer is easier, because the system enforces structure by default.“

Interested in learning how DronaHQ can enable similar results for your engineering team? Schedule a walkthrough with us.

Estimate your ROI: low-code calculator

Curious how these numbers translate to your own team? Use this ROI calculator to estimate the potential time and cost savings from adopting low-code for internal tool development. Launch ROI calculator

Watch the full conversation

For a deeper dive into Purplle’s engineering mindset, internal tooling strategy, and lessons from their low-code migration:

🎙️ Catch the full interview with Purplle’s engineering leaders Watch the full conversation