Company Dossier · Logistics & Trade
Nuvocargo
The digital freight forwarder trying to make the U.S.-Mexico border feel like one country.
The digital freight forwarder trying to make the U.S.-Mexico border feel like one country.
Most of the goods that move between the United States and Mexico do not travel by ship or by rail. They roll across the border on trucks - millions of them a year, through crossings like Laredo, Texas, where in October 2022 the land port quietly moved more freight than the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach combined. It is one of the largest trade relationships on the planet, and for decades it has run on phone calls, faxed paperwork, and a chain of a dozen or more parties who rarely talk to one another.
Nuvocargo was built for that gap. Founded in late 2019 by Deepak Chhugani, the company is a digital-first freight forwarder and licensed U.S. customs broker that puts trucking, customs clearance, cargo insurance, carrier payments and trade financing on a single platform. The pitch is simple to state and hard to execute: give a shipper one place to move a load across the border, and connect all the people who touch it along the way.
"Cross-border trade, however, is anything but straightforward."
— Deepak Chhugani, Founder & CEOThat complexity is the business. Chhugani, a former M&A banker at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, describes Nuvocargo not as a trucking company but as "the central hub connecting multiple parties" in a supply chain. Reportedly the first Ecuadorian native funded by Y Combinator - and admitted as a solo, nontechnical founder at 24 - he bet that the winner in cross-border freight would be whoever owned the information layer, not the trucks.
A shipper booking a load with Nuvocargo touches freight, customs, insurance and payments without stitching together a half-dozen vendors.
The customers are a mix of large Mexican exporters and U.S. enterprises - names like Kimberly-Clark, Nestle and Grupo Bimbo sit on the client roster of roughly 500 shippers. The problem Nuvocargo solves for them is coordination. A single cross-border shipment can involve a broker, a carrier on each side, a customs agent, an insurer and a bank, each with its own paperwork and its own idea of where the truck is. When those systems do not connect, freight waits at the border - and waiting is the most expensive thing a load can do.
Nuvocargo's answer is Nuvo OS, a proprietary transportation management system that centralizes documents, tracking, exceptions and communication. Layered on top are adjacent products: a licensed customs brokerage, cargo insurance, Carrier QuickPay for fast carrier payments, and embedded trade finance. The company says shippers who use both its freight and customs products clear the border about 33% faster, and that the customs product has held a 100% retention rate.
The proprietary TMS that centralizes documents, real-time tracking, exceptions and communication for every cross-border shipment.
Digital-first over-the-road freight forwarding and brokerage across major U.S.-Mexico border crossings, backed by a vetted carrier network.
Licensed U.S. customs brokerage integrated with freight - the pairing that drives the ~33% faster crossings.
One-click cash advances and fast cross-border payments that improve carrier cash flow and loyalty.
Embedded cargo protection offered alongside bookings, so coverage isn't a separate scramble.
AI agents that automate quoting, booking, dispatch, tracking, auditing and payment across the load lifecycle - aimed at cutting freight spend 7-20%.
Plenty of companies want a piece of digital freight - Flexport at the global scale, Nowports across Latin America, Uber Freight and a wave of digital brokers in between, plus the incumbent brokers and customs houses that have worked the border for generations. Nuvocargo's wedge is focus: rather than spread thin across every trade lane, it concentrated on the single densest U.S.-Mexico corridor and owned the full crossing there before expanding.
The business model follows from that focus. Nuvocargo earns margin on the freight it brokers and moves, then cross-sells the surrounding products - customs, insurance, QuickPay, financing - each of which deepens the customer relationship and lifts the contribution margin on every shipment. The company has said that margin per shipment grew roughly 9x in a single year while it cut its operating burn by about half, an unusually disciplined profile for a venture-backed logistics startup.
More than $74M raised, climbing from a $180M valuation in 2021 to over $250M at the 2023 Series B.
"Nuvocargo is on-track to becoming one of the leading startups to spearhead the nearshoring trend."
— Lauren Morton, Partner, QED InvestorsThe 2023 round was led by QED with participation from NFX, Tiger Global and ALLVP, plus new backers including Tresalia Capital, Amador Holdings, and the co-founders of Dropbox, Replit and Platzi. The capital is earmarked to expand beyond Laredo to every major U.S.-Mexico crossing and to keep building Nuvo OS.
Deepak Chhugani launches the company to simplify U.S.-Mexico cross-border freight.
Builds the digital freight platform and adds cargo insurance, backed by Y Combinator and early VCs.
Tiger Global leads, with the Flexport Fund, QED and NFX. Nuvo OS and Carrier QuickPay take shape.
Laredo out-ships L.A. and Long Beach combined; Nuvocargo adds customs brokerage and Chhugani makes Forbes 30 Under 30.
QED leads a round to reach all major border crossings as margins rise and burn falls.
Repositions as an AI partner automating North American freight across the full load lifecycle.
It is a digital freight forwarder and licensed U.S. customs broker that centralizes trucking, customs clearance, cargo insurance, carrier payments and trade finance for shipments crossing the U.S.-Mexico border.
Deepak Chhugani founded it in late 2019. He is a former Wall Street M&A banker, born in Kenya and raised in Ecuador.
More than $74M in total, including a $20.5M Series A in 2021 and a $36.5M Series B in 2023 at a valuation above $250M.
Around 500 shippers, including large enterprises such as Kimberly-Clark, Nestle and Grupo Bimbo, spanning both Mexican exporters and U.S. companies.
It combines freight, customs, insurance and financing on one software platform (Nuvo OS) rather than stitching together many vendors, and reports customers using both freight and customs cross the border about 33% faster.
Watch & learn: search YouTube for the McKinsey "Logistics Disruptors" conversation with Deepak Chhugani and Nuvocargo's own product walkthroughs.