India's video-first storefront for physical stores. We own the technology stack.
Most of India's physical stores exist online as nothing more than a pin on a map. VDOlocal gives them a video-first storefront, and Sitio Labs, as CTO Partner, owns every technology decision behind it. This page is about how that partnership works.
FEATURES
Sitio Labs owns the end-to-end system design, the storefront platform, merchant tooling, and the services underneath. Every architectural decision is ours to make and ours to defend.
The consumer and merchant mobile experiences are designed, built, and shipped by the studio, the same engineering practice behind our own products.
The AI layer that powers video-first discovery and merchant workflows is studio-built, with the same accuracy-budget discipline we apply across the portfolio.
Hosting, deployment, observability, and cost discipline, owned end to end, engineered for a product that is live across India.
Five patents filed across the technology. Where the work is genuinely novel, we protect it, patent-ready architecture is part of the CTO Partnership model.
This is a co-founding partnership, not a vendor relationship. Sitio Labs holds the technology roadmap; VDOlocal holds the market. Both sides win together or not at all.
HOW IT WORKS
The studio joined VDOlocal as CTO Partner, not on an invoice, but on aligned terms. Technology decisions moved under one accountable owner from day one.
Platform, mobile, AI, and infrastructure were designed as one system. No agency patchwork, no handoffs, a single technical vision executed by a single team.
The product is live across India and evolves weekly. The partnership model means the people who designed the system are the ones improving it, release after release.
Five patents filed across the work. IP strategy runs alongside engineering, where the technology breaks new ground, the partnership protects it.
CTO Partnership · Retail Tech · India
VDOlocal needed more than an agency: it needed a technical co-founder willing to own outcomes across platform, mobile, AI, and infrastructure. Sitio Labs structured a CTO Partnership, equity-aligned, long-term, with complete ownership of technology decisions and roadmap execution. The result is the model we now offer other ventures: senior technical judgement plus a full build team, with incentives that make walking away impossible.
THE FULL STORY
India's physical stores, the overwhelming majority of its retail economy, have almost no digital presence beyond a map pin and a phone number. Photos don't sell a saree shop or a jewellery counter. Video does. But no platform existed to give a store owner a video-first storefront without an agency and a budget.
VDOlocal's founding team knew the market cold; what the venture needed was a technology partner who could own the hard part. Our shared research settled the core bet: store owners will produce video if the tooling makes it effortless, and buyers browse video the way they browse a market street, by walking it.
Structure mattered as much as software. Instead of a services contract, we formed a CTO Partnership: Sitio Labs owns the technology stack and roadmap outright; VDOlocal owns the market, the brand, and the merchant relationships. Co-founding terms keep both sides in the room for every hard decision.
Two very different users, one system: a merchant experience simple enough for a store owner to run between customers, and a consumer experience where video is the interface, not a feature buried in a gallery tab.
Platform, mobile, AI, and infrastructure designed as one system by one team. Video pipelines engineered for Indian networks and devices. Where the work broke new ground, we filed for protection, five patents across the technology.
VDOlocal is live across India with the complete technology stack owned and operated under the partnership. The venture gets CTO-grade decisions without a CTO hire; the studio gets aligned upside and a proven model it now offers to others.
Incentive structure is architecture. A vendor optimizes for the invoice; a partner optimizes for the outcome, and the codebase can tell the difference within a quarter. This partnership is why CTO Partnership exists as a standing offer at Sitio Labs.
INSIGHTS
Outsourced builds fail at the handoff: the people who made the decisions leave, and the venture inherits code nobody owns. A CTO Partnership keeps decision-makers accountable for years, not sprints.
Filing five patents forced precision about what was genuinely novel in the work. For early ventures, IP strategy is less about litigation and more about knowing, exactly, what your technical moat is.
A shop owner who would never write a product description will happily show the product on camera. Video-first commerce isn't a trend for Bharat, it's the format that matches how trust is actually built.
FAQ
VDOlocal is an independent venture. Sitio Labs is its CTO Partner, we own the technology architecture, engineering, and roadmap under co-founding terms. The market, brand, and merchant network belong to VDOlocal.
Complete ownership of technology decisions: platform architecture, mobile engineering, AI systems, infrastructure, and the technical roadmap, plus responsibility for the five patents filed across the work.
Revenue share or an equity kicker plus a monthly retainer, with a minimum six-month term. The variable component is the point, it keeps the studio optimizing for the venture's outcome, not the invoice.
If your venture is live, has a real market, and needs serious technical leadership, yes, that's exactly who the model is for. Start a conversation and we'll give you a straight answer within a week.
SITIO LABS
The CTO Partnership model is open to a small number of ventures each year. If you own a market and need someone to own the technology, let's talk.