The starting point

Udan Express is a delivery company offering courier, cash on delivery, cargo and cross-border shipping, from Kathmandu to anywhere. A business like that runs on trust: the sender needs to know where a parcel is, the receiver needs an honest delivery date, and the merchant needs the cash collected at the door to come back on time. Udan Express asked Lacspace to build the platform that makes all three visible.

The scope

  • A nationwide and global network. All 77 districts across all seven provinces of Nepal, and 220+ countries through overseas gateways, on one tracking number the whole way.
  • Plain-language tracking. Every scan is shown in plain words over SMS and the web, a promise date is set at booking, and failed attempts are shown with the reason.
  • Cash on delivery, settled weekly. Cash is collected at the door and settled on a fixed cycle, backed by an append-only ledger reconciled per rider and per branch.
  • Transparent pricing. A rate calculator by weight and district shows the full breakdown, including base, weight, surcharges, discount and VAT, before the customer confirms.

What we built

Lacspace designed and built the whole platform, end to end:

  • The customer website, with tracking, the rate calculator and booking.
  • A merchant dashboard for e-commerce sellers: bulk booking, CSV upload, labels, returns and analytics.
  • A developer platform: a versioned REST API with webhooks, idempotency and a sandbox, plus WooCommerce, Magento and Zapier integrations.
  • Rider apps that work offline first, with route navigation, a call before arrival and photo proof of delivery.
  • A services engine covering express and same-day, overnight nationwide, cargo and freight by the kilogram, international door-to-door with customs, warehousing and 3PL, fragile handling, reverse pickups, and declared-value insurance and claims.

Built to scale

The platform was designed for a capacity of 9,000 parcels a day across 12 branches and 6 regional hubs, with 9 overseas gateways connecting Nepal to 220+ countries. A parcel gets three documented delivery attempts before it is returned, so a missed delivery is never silent.

A parcel’s journey

A merchant books a parcel in the dashboard, one at a time or by uploading a CSV, and prints the label. The rate calculator has already shown the full price breakdown, so there are no surprises later. From the first scan, the sender and the receiver follow the same tracking number, with each step described in plain words over SMS and the web and a promise date set at booking. The rider’s app guides the route, calls the customer before arrival and records a photo as proof of delivery. If the parcel is cash on delivery, the amount joins the ledger for that rider and branch, and the merchant is paid on the weekly settlement cycle.

For international shipments the same tracking number carries on through an overseas gateway to the destination, door to door with customs handled.

Why the details matter

Most complaints about delivery are really complaints about not knowing. That is why so much of the work went into the parts customers never think about: an append-only ledger so cash on delivery always reconciles, idempotent API calls so a merchant’s retry never books a parcel twice, and offline-first rider apps so a weak signal on a rural road does not lose a proof of delivery.

What’s next

Udan Express runs on the platform today at udanexpress.com. Read the full Udan Express case study, or talk to us about a delivery platform of your own.