Monolith first, not microservices
With a team of 7 and a product that needed to ship fast, a well-structured monolith was the right call. Finance, Ops, and Booking shared data models and transactions.
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Secure Logistics ERP
PAN India logistics platform
A logistics ERP built from scratch, handling 70,000 dockets a month for secure jewellery transport.
Stack
Built at MildlyClassic
What made it hard
A secure jewellery logistics business running PAN India on spreadsheets and phone calls, with nothing connected end to end. Requirements came from sitting with the operations and finance teams, and the system had to be adopted by hub staff who had never used software for this. Partway through, a security incident forced a full platform migration off DigitalOcean while the business kept running on it.
Problem
- Everything managed on spreadsheets and calls
- Manual coordination across multiple hub locations
- Phone-based delivery tracking only available
- Nothing connected end to end across operations
- Invoice reconciliation done manually in Excel
- No visibility into real-time shipment status
Solution
- Full ERP system built entirely from scratch
- Finance, Ops, and Booking modules integrated
- Bulk docket creation via CSV file upload
- AWS migration completed in under 3 months
- Real-time tracking dashboard for all shipments
- Automated invoicing and payment reconciliation
Outcome
- 2,500 daily active users across all hubs
- 70K dockets processed monthly without issues
- Zero downtime maintained during rapid scaling
- 100K daily API hits sustained in production
- End-to-end shipment visibility for all clients
- Manual processes reduced by over 80%
2.5K
daily active users
70K
dockets/month
100K
daily hits
0
downtime during scale
Architecture Review
System design · Pipeline · Decisions
How It Works
- 1
Operations
Hub management, route planning, and real-time tracking across PAN India. Bulk docket creation via CSV upload handles 70K deliveries per month for secure jewellery logistics.
- 2
Finance
Integrated finance module handles invoicing, payment tracking, and reconciliation — replacing the parallel spreadsheets that ran the business before.
- 3
Scale
Grew from hundreds to 2,500 daily users with zero downtime. DigitalOcean to AWS migration completed in 3 months. Automated testing pipeline supports monthly releases.
Constraints
- The system served the entire company, Operations and Finance, all day every day; downtime meant shipments stopped
- Hub staff with no prior software workflow had to adopt it, so bulk CSV entry mattered more than elegant UX
- Scaling from hundreds to 2,500 daily users happened on live infrastructure with no maintenance window
- A security incident forced a DigitalOcean to AWS migration inside 3 months, mid-operation
- High-value cargo means shipment state has to be auditable, not just visible
Key Decisions
Full AWS migration over incremental hardening
After a security incident on DigitalOcean, the call was to migrate entirely to AWS rather than patch. Three months of migration bought VPC isolation, managed databases, and a proper security posture.
Monthly release cycles from day one
Established a 4-week build-test-deploy cadence early. This kept the team disciplined and clients expecting regular improvements rather than ad-hoc patches.
What I'd Change
- Automated testing from month two
- Cleaner multi-tenant architecture