Deployment & Vercel Strategy

Deployment Overview

The Indian Startup Funding Tracker is optimized for deployment on Vercel. Since the application relies on a static data architecture to ensure high performance and neo-brutalist animations, the deployment strategy involves a pre-build step to generate the funding datasets.

Prerequisites

• A Vercel account.
• The repository pushed to GitHub, GitLab, or Bitbucket.
• Node.js 18+ and npm/pnpm/yarn installed locally.

Data Generation Strategy

Before the Next.js build process begins, the application must process raw data into the format consumed by the UI components. This is handled via a configuration file and a generation script.

1. Currency Configuration: Ensure the conversion rate is set in config/currency.js.
2. Generate Data: The command npm run generate-data must be executed to populate data/funding-data.ts.

Vercel Deployment Steps

To deploy the application with the required data generation:

1. Import Project: In the Vercel Dashboard, click New Project and select your repository.
2. Build Settings: Modify the default Build Command to include the data generation script:
   • Build Command: npm run generate-data && next build
   • Install Command: npm install
3. Environment Variables: While the core app is static, ensure any future API keys (e.g., for external news sources) are added here.
4. Deploy: Click Deploy. Vercel will run the script, generate the TypeScript data files, and compile the optimized Next.js build.

Vercel Analytics Integration

The application includes built-in support for Vercel Analytics via the @vercel/analytics package. This is pre-configured in the RootLayout (app/layout.tsx).

To enable data collection:

1. Navigate to the Analytics tab in your Vercel project dashboard.
2. Click Enable.
3. Redeploy the application (or trigger a new build) to activate the tracking script.

Production Optimization

The deployment utilizes several Vercel-specific features to maintain the "Neo-brutalism" UI performance:

| Feature | Role in Project | | :--- | :--- | | Edge Middleware | Handles fast routing for the explore and analytics pages. | | Static Site Generation (SSG) | All deal pages (app/deal/[id]/page.tsx) are pre-rendered at build time for instant loading. | | Image Optimization | Automatically handles icons and logos defined in metadata and components. |

Updating Data Post-Deployment

To update the funding records or the USD-to-INR conversion rate on a live site:

1. Update the source data or modify config/currency.js.
2. Commit the changes to your main branch.
3. Vercel will automatically trigger a new deployment, running npm run generate-data again to refresh the analytics and deal lists.

# Example: Manual update and push
git add config/currency.js
git commit -m "chore: update INR conversion rate to 83.50"
git push origin main

Troubleshooting Builds

If the deployment fails during the next build step, verify that the data/funding-data.ts file exists. This file is ignored by .gitignore in some configurations and must be generated during the Vercel build process using the combined command mentioned in the Build Settings section.