Relio
Making mobile build distribution predictable.
An OTA app distribution platform for development and testing teams to upload, validate and distribute iOS and Android builds with diagnostics, controlled access and installation insights.
Role: Co-founder & CTO · Lazy Tech Savvy
Context
The problem behind the download link.
Relio is an OTA (over-the-air) distribution platform for Android and iOS development builds. It lets development teams, agencies and organizations upload mobile builds and get them into the hands of developers, QA engineers, clients and internal stakeholders without going through a public app-store release. The idea grew out of a familiar but underrated problem: producing a build is usually the easy part — getting it reliably into the right person's hands, repeatedly, across a team, is where the friction actually lives.
Problem
Internal build sharing shouldn't become another engineering problem.
While working with a large development team, the same problem kept coming up: getting the right build to the right person was harder than it should be. Ad hoc solutions like Google Drive links or WhatsApp worked, but broke down at scale — version confusion, no dedicated install experience, no visibility into who actually installed a build, and access that got messy over time. Existing OTA tools such as Diawi and Loadly solved the basic "here's a link, install this" problem, but working with those kinds of workflows surfaced a bigger opportunity: teams didn't just need a place to host a file, they needed to know whether a build was actually installable, who had installed it, and how to manage that across a team.
The real question wasn't "where can I download this build?" It was "is this build actually installable, who has installed it, and how do we manage this across a team?"
Solution
From file sharing to build intelligence.
Relio is built around a simple workflow — upload, validate, distribute — but the meaningful difference is what happens between those steps. Instead of treating an APK or IPA as just another file, Relio processes the uploaded build and surfaces diagnostics before a tester attempts installation, then gives teams a structured way to organize builds by organization and project and track what happens after a build is shared.
Product Vision
- Build Distribution· Implemented
- Team Build Management· In Development
- Developer Automation· Planned
- Testing Intelligence· Planned
My Role
Co-founder & CTO — Lazy Tech Savvy.
- Identified the problem and defined the product direction from real development-team workflow friction.
- Designed the UX/UI for the upload, distribution and installation experience.
- Built the frontend with Next.js and the backend API with Node.js.
- Designed the PostgreSQL data model and deployed the backend on Railway with the database hosted on Neon.
- Owned build distribution and diagnostics logic for both Android and iOS.
- Took the product from idea through MVP implementation and deployment.
Relio was designed, built and deployed independently by Subhajit — end-to-end product ownership from problem definition through MVP launch, developed under Lazy Tech Savvy.
Key Features
- Android & iOS Distribution — Upload and distribute internal Android and iOS builds through a single workflow designed for development and testing teams.
- Smart Install Diagnostics — Surface important installation requirements and potential issues, such as provisioning and device compatibility, before a tester gets stuck during installation.
- Automatic UDID Collection — Simplify iOS device registration by collecting tester device information through the enrollment workflow instead of requiring testers to manually find and share their UDID.
- One-Click Distribution — Turn an uploaded build into a shareable installation experience through links and QR codes.
- Installation Analytics — Give teams visibility into build activity beyond the initial download.
- Organizations & Teams — Organize builds around organizations, projects and team members so distribution works as part of an actual engineering workflow.
- Slack Integration — Bring build and installation events into the team's existing Slack workflow.
- Build Lifecycle — Builds can have lifecycle constraints so the platform can manage how long distributed artifacts remain available.
Product Thinking
- The market had already proven that developers needed a simple way to share mobile builds — the opportunity wasn't another upload-and-download interface, it was asking what the platform could do if it understood the build before distributing it.
- That question shaped the product philosophy: upload, understand the build, validate it, distribute it, then observe installation — treating distribution as a lifecycle rather than a single file-transfer operation.
- Existing tools like Diawi and Loadly proved OTA distribution was useful, but working with a large development team surfaced gaps around diagnostics, observability and team management that became Relio's real opportunity.
- Relio reinforced a broader lesson: developer tools don't need to add complexity to solve a technical problem — the best ones remove complexity from a workflow developers already have.
What this project demonstrates
Product Thinking
Turning a recurring engineering workflow problem into a focused SaaS product.
Full-Stack Ownership
Building the product across frontend, backend, database and infrastructure.
Mobile Ecosystem Expertise
Designing around the real constraints of Android and iOS distribution rather than treating builds as generic files.
Systems Thinking
Connecting build processing, validation, distribution and team workflows into a single product.
Developer Experience
Reducing friction for the developers, QA engineers and teams who need to distribute builds repeatedly.
Technical Architecture
Relio's web application and API are built with Next.js and Node.js. PostgreSQL, hosted on Neon, is the database, and the backend is deployed on Railway. The platform handles build upload, distribution and diagnostics for both Android and iOS through this stack.
Build-storage and background-processing details will be added once fully documented.
Technical Challenges
Problem: Android and iOS don't behave the same way when it comes to installing a development build. Android can install a hosted APK directly, but iOS distribution is constrained by Apple's own provisioning system — profiles, registered device UDIDs, provisioning expiry and OS/Developer Mode requirements all affect whether a build can actually be installed.
Decision: Rather than trying to work around Apple's distribution model, Relio was designed to work within it — treating iOS provisioning as something the platform should make visible, not something it should hide or bypass.
Implementation: The iOS distribution flow is built around surfacing installation requirements to the tester before they attempt to install, rather than letting them discover a provisioning problem mid-install.
Trade-off: This means Relio manages visibility and workflow around Apple's constraints rather than eliminating them — a build's installability still ultimately depends on Apple's own signing and provisioning rules.
Results / Status
MVP
Status
Web
Platform
Relio reached MVP stage and was deployed, giving development teams a working OTA distribution workflow for Android and iOS builds. Development is currently paused while pre-production refinements are addressed before the next phase of the roadmap — team build management, developer automation and testing intelligence.
Tech Stack
Frontend
Backend
Database
Database Hosting
Backend Hosting
Visual Gallery
Links
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