UTS Karlo: one app to rent, ride, track and run a transport company.
How we built a single mobile app for United Transport Services: customers rent a car with a driver or book pick & drop in a few taps, staff and managers run bookings and the fleet from a protected portal, and live vehicle tracking stays secure on our own server.
Five decades of moving people.
United Transport Services began in 1970 in Karachi as a family-run rent-a-car operation started by Mr. Zulfiqar Ahmed Khan. Run today by his four sons, UTS has grown into a transport and mobility company offering chauffeur-driven cars, pick & drop, corporate transport and fleet services across Pakistan's major cities, and has expanded into Saudi Arabia.
Decades of experience, no digital front door.
Customers phoned or messaged, staff checked availability by hand, and the information needed to run the business lived in different places.
Bookings by phone and message
Every rental started with a call or a chat. There was no self-service way to see which cars were free and book one.
Multi-day pricing done by hand
Daily rates differ by car, model year, local or outstation trip and overnight stay, and had to be multiplied out for every booking.
A mixed fleet
UTS-owned cars sit alongside vendor and partner vehicles, each needing approval, pricing and a clear free/busy status.
Tracking data that had to stay private
The tracker's access key could never sit inside an app, yet managers needed the whole fleet on a map and customers sometimes needed to follow one vehicle.
Different people, different access
Customers, front-desk staff and managers each needed their own view, with sensitive tools hidden from everyone else.
Students and institutions
Recurring student transport needed a request-and-approval flow before any vehicle or location details are shared.
Three connected pieces, one live database.
A customer app, a staff & manager portal and a secure tracking server, built and run by our team and all reading from one shared, real-time database.
Book in a minute
Rent a car with live availability, pick & drop for people, companies and students, corporate requests, My Bookings with a live trip status bar, loyalty points, light & dark mode.
Run the business
Hidden, passcode-protected entry. Every booking and request in one inbox, fleet free/busy at a glance, vendor approval, per-vehicle prices, stats and a full audit log.
Track without leaks
The tracker key stays server-side only. Managers see the whole fleet; staff create signed share links that expire; customers see one vehicle only.
Rent a car, without the phone call.
Pick a city and dates, see only the cars that are free for the whole trip, choose a model year, and see the full price before booking.
- One card per model: "Toyota Corolla" opens into 2015–16, 2017–20 and 2025, and the photo, specs and price switch with the year
- Automatic multi-day pricing that shows the working, e.g. PKR 12,000/day × 5 days = PKR 60,000
- A car only appears if it is free on every day of the range; staff can mark any car Busy in one tap
- CNIC and ID photo for verification, loyalty credits, and a receipt with the full breakdown
Every way UTS moves people has its own simple form.
Each request lands in the staff inbox the moment it is sent.
- Pick & drop: point-to-point rides for individuals and companies
- Corporate transport: companies describe their size, cities and contract length; UTS replies with a plan
- Students & institutions: requests are verified with the institution before anything is shared
- Once approved, staff create a time-limited tracking link for that one vehicle
Built into the same app, invisible to customers.
Opened by a hidden gesture and a passcode, with manager tools behind a second passcode.
- Submissions: rent a car, pick & drop, corporate and career requests in one inbox, each with its status
- Fleet & partners: every car with search and free/busy at a glance; approve, price or remove partner vehicles
- Manager tools: stats and partner revenue, driver profiles, employees and a full activity log
- The live fleet map isn't even listed; the tracking server asks for its own password
The app never holds the tracker's key.
The fleet's GPS tracker is reached only through our own server, so the key can never leak from a phone. Built for 262 tracked vehicles on one map.
Whole fleet on one map
Every tracked vehicle on a live street map, moving, engine on, parked or offline, with search by plate.
Links that expire
Staff pick a plate and a number of hours; the server signs a pass that stops working on its own.
Nothing to steal
No tracker key in the app and no fleet data for customers. A shared link reveals one vehicle and nothing else.
An app people open again.
UTS's own look, a home screen that leads with what customers book most, and reasons to come back.
- Home that sells: Rent a Car leads as the largest tile, with cars available right now and real city photos
- Light & dark mode on every screen, remembered on each phone, including the staff portal
- Nine games with live leaderboards: Driver Challenge, Precision Parking, Guess the City and more
- A branded loading screen that opens with "Powered by United Apex Developers"
One branded app, end to end.
Customers can book from start to finish, and the UTS team runs the business from the same app.
Where UTS Karlo goes from here.
App Store & Play Store
Publishing UTS Karlo as an installable app on iPhone and Android.
OTP sign-in
Phone-number login with one-time codes for customers.
Scale-up backend
Moving the shared database to a dedicated cloud backend as usage grows.