Ubuy Scales E-Commerce Globally and Unlocks AI With MongoDB

In today’s digital era, global e-commerce presents a major growth opportunity. This is particularly acute for businesses looking to expand beyond their local markets. While some companies thrive by serving domestic customers, others capitalize on cross-border e-commerce to reach a wider audience.

Ubuy, a Kuwait-based e-commerce company, is tapping into this opportunity. Operating in over 180 countries, Ubuy enables customers worldwide to purchase products that may not be available in their local markets. The Ubuy App, which is also available to users on both iOS and Android, supports over 60 languages internationally and is a popular way to access Ubuy’s platform.

Ubuy simplifies logistics, customs, and shipping to create a seamless shopping experience. It acts as a bridge between customers and international sellers. Unlike traditional marketplaces, Ubuy provides end-to-end services, from sourcing products and performing quality checks to handling shipping and customs. This ensures that products, even those newly launched in international markets, are accessible to buyers globally with minimal hassle.

Founded in 2012, Ubuy initially focused on the Gulf Cooperation Council region. Having identified a gap in international products’ availability there, it used the next three years to expand its services. Today, Ubuy offers a diverse catalog of over 300 million products, and customers worldwide can access products from nine warehouses strategically located in the United States, the United Kingdom, China (including in Hong Kong), Turkey, Korea, Japan, Germany, and Kuwait.

Scaling such a vast operation represented a significant technological challenge. MongoDB Atlas proved critical in enabling Ubuy to scale its operations and address specific search performance and inventory management issues.

Overcoming search and scalability challenges

Before adopting MongoDB Atlas, Ubuy relied on MySQL to manage product data and search functions. However, this model’s limitations led to performance bottlenecks—it couldn’t handle large-scale search operations, lacked high availability, and struggled to manage complex search queries from customers across different markets. Slow query responses, averaging as much as 4–5 seconds per search, impacted the user experience, making it critical for Ubuy to identify a more scalable solution.

Ubuy migrated to MongoDB Atlas and implemented both MongoDB Atlas Search and MongoDB Atlas Vector Search to overcome these hurdles. By using these products, Ubuy significantly improved search efficiency, reducing response times to milliseconds. The company can now ensure high search relevancy, enabling users to find products more accurately and quickly.

Migrating a large platform to MongoDB Atlas

At Ubuy’s scale, the migration to MongoDB Atlas required careful planning. In March 2023, the team conducted a proof of concept to test MongoDB Atlas’s capabilities in handling its vast inventory. A month later, the migration was complete: Ubuy had transitioned from MySQL to a fully managed MongoDB Atlas environment.

The transition was seamless, with no downtime. The MongoDB team provided ongoing guidance to help Ubuy optimize search filters and facilitate a smooth integration with its existing e-commerce systems. The result was an improved customer experience through faster and more relevant search results.

Ubuy chose MongoDB Atlas for three key reasons:

• Scalability: MongoDB Atlas provides the ability to handle massive data loads efficiently, enabling smooth search performance even during peak traffic.

• High availability: As a fully managed cloud database, MongoDB Atlas provides resilience and reduces downtime.

• AI-powered search: The use of MongoDB Atlas Search improves Ubuy’s product discovery experience, helping customers find the right products without seeing unnecessary results. Additionally, MongoDB Atlas Vector Search provides semantic search capabilities. This enables more intuitive product discovery based on intent rather than merely on keywords, enhancing customer satisfaction.

Using AI-powered enhancements to drive customer engagement

Beyond improving search performance, Ubuy has been enhancing its customers’ shopping experiences through AI.

Ubuy integrated AI-powered search and recommendation systems with MongoDB Atlas’s vector database capabilities. This enabled a transition from simple keyword-based searches to a more intuitive, intent-driven discovery experience.

For example, when a user searches for a specific keyword, like “Yamaha guitar,” the AI-enhanced product page now provides structured information on this product’s suitability for beginners, professionals, and trainers. This improves user experience and enhances SEO visibility, driving organic traffic to Ubuy’s platform.

“With MongoDB Atlas Search and Atlas Vector Search, we’re able to deliver personalized product recommendations in real-time, making it easier for customers to find what they need faster than ever before,” said Mr OM Prakash Swami, Head of IT at Ubuy.

Achieving response speed and business growth

Since implementing MongoDB Atlas and AI-driven enhancements, Ubuy has seen remarkable improvements:

• Search response time reduced from 4–5 seconds to milliseconds

• Over 150 million search queries handled annually with improved relevancy

• Higher engagement on product pages due to AI-enriched content

• Ability to scale inventory beyond 300 million products with zero performance concerns

“Moving to MongoDB Atlas and being able to use features such as Atlas Vector Search have been a game changer,” said Swami. “The ability to handle massive search queries in milliseconds while maintaining high relevancy has dramatically improved our customer experience and business operations. The flexibility of MongoDB Atlas has not only improved our search performance but also set the stage for AI-powered innovations that were previously impossible with our relational database setup.”

Enhancing the future of e-commerce

Looking ahead, Ubuy aims to optimize search by consolidating inventory visibility across multiple stores. The goal is to enable users to search across all warehouses from a single interface, delivering even greater convenience.

Ubuy’s transformation showcases how employing MongoDB Atlas, along with its fully-integrated search capabilities and AI-driven insights, can significantly enhance global e-commerce operations. By addressing scalability and search relevance challenges, the company has positioned itself as a leader in cross-border e-commerce. With a relentless focus on innovation, Ubuy is set to redefine how consumers access international products. Together, Ubuy and MongoDB are helping make shopping across borders effortless and efficient.

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