About us
Built for
Nepal's roads.
Not adapted from a network designed for somewhere flat. Every decision here starts from monsoon closures, unaddressed streets, and a country where most orders are still paid in cash at the door.
- Registered in Kathmandu
- Founded 2026
- Nepali owned
- All 77 districts
Why we started
Every merchant we spoke to named the same problem
It was never speed. It was not knowing when the COD money would arrive, and not being able to tell a customer anything useful when a delivery failed.
- Chasing money on the phone
- Merchants were spending hours a week asking a courier where their own cash was. That is a solved problem everywhere else.
- “Failed” with no reason
- A status that says failed and nothing else moves the problem to the merchant’s support team without giving them anything to act on.
- Optimistic promise dates
- A three-day promise on a nine-day route does not make the parcel faster. It makes the merchant a liar to their customer.
Where we are
The network at launch
Designed and staffed figures. When they change, this page changes.
- Districts served
- 77Districts servedAll seven provinces
- Branches & hubs
- 12Branches & hubs6 sorting hubs
- Riders
- 240RidersOwn last-mile fleet
- Merchant capacity
- 1,800Merchant capacityDesigned for
Our principles
Four rules we will not trade away
Written down before launch, so they are harder to quietly abandon under pressure later.
- 1
Say the real date
Quote nine days to Humla and hit it, rather than quoting three and going quiet.
- 2
Never sit on the money
COD is credited on delivery and settled on a fixed day. It is the merchant’s cash, not our float.
- 3
Publish the failure
The reason a delivery failed belongs on the tracking page, not in a support script.
- 4
Pay riders properly
Salaried routes, because a rider paid per drop is punished for taking care.
The money
We hold merchants' cash. That is a serious thing.
At any moment the network is carrying money that belongs to other businesses. Treating that as working capital is the single most common way couriers in this region fail their customers.
- An append-only ledger
- Every credit and debit is a line with a tracking number behind it. Corrections are new entries, never edits.
- Two people to move money
- Approval and payment are separate actions by named people, both in the audit log.
- Never a float
- Collected cash is a liability on our books from the moment it is scanned, and it is settled on schedule.
The people
The last mile is a person, not an algorithm
Route optimisation matters less in Nepal than a rider who knows which unmarked gate belongs to which ward. We hire for that and pay for it.
- Salaried routes
- Not pure piece rate. A rider should be able to wait three minutes at a gate without losing money.
- Local knowledge, kept local
- Riders work consistent areas so the knowledge compounds instead of resetting daily.
- Equipped, not just employed
- Uniform, insulated box, a phone with the app, and a cash limit that keeps them safe.
How we operate
Six choices that shape everything else
Each one costs us something. We think each one is worth it.
Own the corridor, partner beyond
And say which is which on the coverage map, rather than claiming national coverage and quietly subcontracting half of it.
Four scans, always
Skipping a scan saves ninety seconds and costs the ability to answer “where is it” without a phone call.
Offline-first field software
Because signal drops in exactly the districts people worry about most.
Cash limits on riders
Nobody carries an unsafe amount. It slows a route down occasionally. That is the correct trade.
Published surcharges
Nothing appears on an invoice that was not on the quote. Ever.
Support with ops access
The person answering the phone can see the same board dispatch sees, not a read-only summary.
The network
Six hubs, twelve branches, one line-haul spine
The whole operation is organised around making the evening departure. Everything upstream of that — pickup windows, sort cut-offs, label printing — exists to feed it.
- Fixed departures, not “when full”
- A half-empty truck that leaves on time beats a full one that leaves tomorrow.
- Sorted once at each end
- Every extra handling is another chance to lose or damage something.
- Manifested at both ends
- A discrepancy is found the same night, while people still remember the load.
Technology
We built the software before the marketing site
The ledger, the state machine and the offline queue existed before this page did. That order was deliberate — the hard parts of a courier are not the ones customers see first.
- A validated state machine
- A parcel cannot be delivered without having been picked up. The system refuses, rather than trusting everyone to be careful.
- Idempotent money writes
- A retried request after a timeout is a no-op, not a second credit. That is not optional on cash.
- Offline queues on every device
- A scan in a valley with no signal is stored with its real timestamp and replayed later.
The promise
An honest date is worth more than a fast one
A merchant can plan around six days. They cannot plan around a three-day promise that lands in nine. The whole zone table exists to make the first thing possible.
- Working days, seasonally adjusted
- Saturday is Nepal’s weekend and monsoon closes hill roads. Both are in the promise.
- Set at booking, shown to the recipient
- So the customer and the merchant are looking at the same date.
- Express refunds the premium
- If we miss an express window, the difference to standard comes back automatically.
Coverage
The whole country, or it does not count
A courier that serves the Valley and the highway is a Valley courier with extra steps. Getting to Jumla is harder, slower and less profitable — and it is the reason the network exists.
- Every district, from day one
- Not a phase two. The far-west routes launched with the corridor.
- Priced for what it costs
- Rather than averaged into everyone else’s rate, which quietly makes Valley merchants subsidise hill deliveries.
- Partner standards, not partner excuses
- The same tracking, the same settlement, the same accountability when something goes wrong.
Support
A phone number that a person answers
A 12-minute first-response target during working hours, in Nepali or English, from someone who can see the same operational board dispatch sees.
- One thread per parcel
- Not a new ticket each time you follow up on the same problem.
- Escalation that moves things
- To someone who can redirect a parcel, not just log a complaint.
- Honest answers about delays
- Including the ones where the answer is “the road is closed and we do not know when it opens”.
Safety
Cash and roads are the two real risks
Everything else in this business is logistics. These two are safety, and they are treated differently: with hard limits rather than guidance.
- Rider cash caps
- Above a set amount a rider banks before taking more COD. It costs route efficiency and it is not negotiable.
- No pressure to beat a clock
- A rider is never incentivised to ride faster to make a bonus. That is how people get hurt.
- Route closures respected
- A closed road is a hold on the tracking page, not a driver being told to try anyway.
Where we are going
Regional hubs, closer to the customer
The biggest available improvement in delivery time is not faster vehicles. It is stock that starts nearer the recipient — which means regional fulfilment, not just regional sorting.
- Fulfilment beyond Kathmandu
- Holding merchant stock in Pokhara and Biratnagar takes days out of western and eastern promises.
- Packaged store plugins
- So a shop without a developer gets the same integration a shop with one does.
- Digital settlement options
- Wallet payouts alongside bank transfer, for merchants who would rather be paid that way.
Partners
We would rather have fewer, better partners
Partner transport into the hills is the part of the network we control least, so it is the part with the most selection and the least tolerance for drift.
- Vetted, then measured
- On-time rate and damage rate reviewed monthly, not agreed once at signing.
- Our tracking, their vehicle
- A partner leg is scanned exactly like an owned one. The customer sees no seam.
- Accountability stays with us
- If a partner loses a parcel it is our claim to settle, not a merchant’s problem to chase.
Inside the hub
Most of this business happens between midnight and four
While the country sleeps, six hubs are sorting the day's volume onto the next morning's routes. It is the least visible part of the operation and the part that decides whether a promise holds.
- Scanners on the belt
- Mis-sorts caught at the hub rather than three hundred kilometres later.
- Fragile in its own lane
- A physical diversion, not a sticker somebody is meant to notice at 2 am.
- Exceptions raised same shift
- A parcel that misses a departure is flagged before the branch opens.
The measure
One number tells us whether any of this worked
Not parcels moved, not merchants signed. First-attempt delivery rate — because it is the only figure that improves for the customer, the merchant, the rider and our costs at the same time.
- It captures everything upstream
- Bad address data, a missing phone number, a late line-haul — they all show up here.
- It aligns every incentive
- A second attempt costs us money, costs the rider time and costs the customer patience.
- Reviewed by district, weekly
- A district where it drops is a specific problem with a specific fix.
The company
Udan Express Pvt Ltd, registered in Kathmandu
A private Nepali company, funded by its founders, with no foreign parent and no franchise licence behind the name.
- Incorporated 2026
- VAT registered, operating from Tinkune, Ward 32, Kathmandu.
- Nepali owned and operated
- Decisions are made here, by people who use the roads they are planning around.
- Built to be audited
- The ledger, the audit log and the settlement process were designed on the assumption someone would eventually check them.
Questions
About Udan Express
The questions people ask about a new courier.
How long has Udan Express been operating?
What makes you different from the incumbents?
Are you hiring?
Who owns Udan Express?
Come and test the claims
Everything on this page is checkable. Send us a parcel to your hardest district and see whether the date we quoted is the date it arrived.