Dawakhana — offline pharmacy system

The problem

A medical store in Pakistan runs on a counter, a barcode scanner and a paper register. Connectivity is unreliable and load-shedding is routine. Most "cloud POS" products assume a working connection, which makes them useless at exactly the moment the shop needs them.

The requirement was blunt: the app has to work with no internet at all, in both English and Urdu, on a modest Windows PC — and it has to be fast enough that a queue doesn't build at the counter.

What we built

A desktop application, and a separate Android build from the same codebase, covering the full retail loop:

• Buy stock — scan or search, with batch number and expiry captured. GS1 DataMatrix codes fill batch and expiry automatically.
• Sell stock — scan-to-bill with FEFO batch selection, discounts, and an 80mm thermal receipt.
• Inventory — batch-level stock, low-stock and expiry filters, barcode label printing.
• Alerts — expiring stock (expired, ≤30, ≤60, ≤90 days) and low stock, with live sidebar badges.
• Customers and suppliers — balances and payments, the udhaar ledger.
• Reports — sales and purchases by day, stock valuation, expiry report, CSV export and print.

Constraints we had to respect

• Fully offline. No runtime network calls. All fonts and assets are bundled, so the app never reaches for a CDN it cannot get.
• Bilingual, properly. Not a translation layer bolted on top: the interface mirrors to right-to-left, and numerals render in Urdu-Indic digits.
• One codebase, two shells. The Android build reuses the desktop code with a touch-appropriate shell (bottom navigation, camera-first scanning, PDF and share printing).
• Licensed, not cracked open. Activation happens online once; the app then runs offline against a signed lease. Licence responses are Ed25519-signed, so a hijacked network cannot forge one.

Outcome

Dawakhana is a shipping, licensed product rather than a demo. It runs entirely offline, in two languages, with a commercial activation model behind it.