Steve Rahimi wants brands to stop writing code for their logistics operations. Instead, the CEO of Pango envisions a world where merchants type instructions like "ship orders over $100 via DHL Express" into a text box, and artificial intelligence handles the rest.
It's an audacious pitch, particularly in an industry where returns alone cost U.S. retailers $849.9 billion in 2025, representing nearly 16% of all sales, according to research from the National Retail Federation and Happy Returns published in October. The Y Combinator-backed startup claims its platform now automates 99% of returns and shipping tasks for about 30 brands, including Swedish fashion label Eytys and press-on nail maker Switch Nails, though these automation figures are self-reported.
Whether plain-language commands can genuinely replace the tangled web of integrations, carrier contracts, and warehouse systems that power modern retail logistics remains an open question. But Pango's early customers suggest there may be something there.
Plain English, Complex Workflows
Pango's approach centers on what Rahimi calls a "unified order record" that feeds six distinct modules: delivery management, estimated arrival times at checkout, bulk transportation routing, package tracking, returns processing, and warehouse fulfillment. Merchants write rules in conversational language rather than technical specifications. The system then translates those instructions into executable workflows.
The platform connects to over 100 shipping carriers, spanning household names like DHL and FedEx as well as regional players such as PostNord and OnTrac. It also plugs into common e-commerce tools including Shopify, Magento, and customer service software Gorgias. Pango says it can build custom integrations within 36 hours when needed, though this timeline is self-reported.
According to the company, onboarding takes under an hour. Pango cites self-reported metrics from clients showing a 5-8% boost in checkout conversion rates, a 70% drop in delivery-related support inquiries, and return rates falling as much as 30%.
Switch Nails offers a window into how this plays out in practice. The beauty brand now routes more than 150,000 deliveries through Pango's system, automating virtually all of its returns processes, according to a case study the startup published in July. Perhaps more tellingly, Switch Nails converted 19% of returns into exchanges or store credit after implementing Pango's tools—up from essentially zero before, according to Pango's self-reported case study. Customers who opted for exchanges rather than refunds went on to make repeat purchases at a 33% rate, versus 20% for those who simply got their money back.
"Pango streamlines the deliveries and returns…fully automated with the back-end," Josefin Beijer, head of customer experience at Swedish retailer Understatement, said in a testimonial on the company's site.
Y Combinator, which backed Pango through its accelerator program, framed the value proposition more bluntly in an August post: "With Pango, 100,000 orders require the same human effort as 1 order."
The Founders and the Funding
Rahimi brings an e-commerce background to the venture. His co-founder, Lukasz Reszczynski, previously led development at Partfiniti and built a product configurator that the company says powered over $1.5 billion in customer quotes. The startup operates out of Stockholm and New York with a team that Y Combinator lists as five, though LinkedIn shows up to 18 employees.
Pango disclosed a roster of investors on February 2, including HEARTFELT VC, SSE Business Lab, Wave Ventures, Karaoke Club, and several angel backers such as Johan Licke von Sydow, Marc Verschueren, and Anders Signell. The company declined to share how much capital it has raised, though a Nordic9 headline from several months back mentioned a SEK 5 million pre-seed round (roughly $470,000). Pango completed Y Combinator's most recent batch, which wrapped with Demo Day in September.
Taking on Established Players
The post-purchase logistics space isn't exactly unoccupied territory. AfterShip, Narvar, Loop, and ReturnGO all offer tracking and returns management tools, many with years of market presence and substantial customer bases.
Rahimi argues his platform differs in architecture rather than just features. In a September comparison, he described competitors as "layers over logistics" that sit atop existing carrier systems, whereas Pango "runs carriers, tracking, delivery and returns on one record with AI agents." Whether that distinction matters to brands remains to be seen, though the startup claims to operate across 40 countries already.
Pricing includes a free tier and custom plans based on order volume. Pango says it doesn't charge per-label or per-return fees, a structure that could appeal to high-volume merchants wary of variable costs.
The broader context helps explain the opportunity Pango sees. A September survey from PR Newswire found that 63% of U.S. shoppers have abandoned a purchase or stopped using a retailer entirely because of frustrations with return policies. For brands, that friction translates directly into lost revenue.
"We have built an agentic OS for e-commerce," Rahimi wrote in a July launch post. "You connect your shop stack, then describe how you want to handle shipments, returns, refunds, or claims." The company says it embedded with brands for about a year during development and has helped reduce operations costs by an average of 20%, though those figures come from Pango's own reporting.
The startup's bet is straightforward: that natural language interfaces powered by AI can collapse what has traditionally required custom development, integration specialists, and ongoing technical maintenance into something far simpler. For an industry where returns logistics can make or break thin margins, that proposition might be compelling enough to gain traction. Or it might prove that some operational complexity resists easy automation, regardless of how sophisticated the underlying models become. Either way, Pango's early traction suggests merchants are at least willing to experiment.
