Uzbek Entrepreneur Digitizes International Freight Paperwork and Hits $80K in Monthly Revenue

Bekhzod Zufarov spent 15 years in international trade and logistics before launching TIRGO in 2022. On the platform, shippers could post freight requests, and drivers could quote their own prices directly, without intermediaries.

For Astana Hub and Digital Business’s “100 Startups from Central Eurasia” project, Bekhzod explained why he decided to pivot and build an AI-powered service that helps freight companies prepare shipping documents faster. We also talked about how TIRGO reached $80,000 in monthly revenue and what the company plans to use $500,000 in investment for.

“The market wasn’t ready in 2018: drivers weren’t really using mobile apps yet”

— Bekhzod, tell us a little about yourself. What were you doing before TIRGO?

— I’m 36. I was born in Tashkent in 1990 and trained as a lawyer, graduating from Tashkent State University of Law. Right after graduation in 2011, I joined the Ministry of Foreign Economic Relations, Investments and Trade. I later worked for industrial companies, where I was responsible for logistics and customs clearance.

A year later, I started my own company distributing construction equipment from international manufacturers. Altogether, I spent around 15 years working in foreign trade. At the same time, I was also building an advertising business. At its peak, we had 12 LED screens and around 30 billboards across Tashkent.

— What was the starting point for TIRGO?

— It started in 2018, when my distribution company arranged a shipment from Iran. The logistics specialist we had hired to handle the shipment couldn’t make it to the unloading point and asked me to pay the driver myself. That’s how I found out that, out of the agreed $4,800, the driver had received only $4,000, while the intermediary had kept $800.

That made me wonder why we were paying such a large commission to an intermediary who had basically just found the driver and wasn’t involved in the shipment itself. From then on, we started working directly with carriers, finding contacts through referrals, posting ads on notice boards, and using specialized Telegram channels.

Around that time, my colleagues and I started talking about building an app that would connect shippers with carriers directly. But the market wasn’t ready yet because drivers and transport companies barely used mobile apps back then. We picked the idea up again during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I hired 12 people and sent them to talk to drivers at the border”

— When did you start developing TIRGO, and what did the process look like?

— We found our first outsourced developers in 2021. The initial team built a mobile app for drivers, a platform for customers, and an admin panel for us. But there were so many bugs and unfinished parts that we ended up having to rewrite the entire codebase. I then hired a second team, but once again, what they delivered wasn’t what we needed. At that point, I realized that if we wanted to stop wasting money, we needed our own development team. So I built an in-house team, and we started rebuilding the product from scratch.

By the summer of 2022, once the MVP was ready, we registered TIRGO as a company. At the same time, I spent about a year stepping away from my other businesses so I could focus fully on the startup. I sold the advertising business and initially handed the distribution company over to my partner, but eventually we shut that down as well.

— Long-haul truckers are often seen as pretty conservative. How did you get them on board?

— I hired 12 people and sent them to border crossing points between Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, where truck drivers would be waiting in long queues. They spoke to the drivers and got them interested in the platform. Some of the drivers told us they had only found out by chance that intermediaries were keeping $200, and sometimes as much as $1,000, from each trip.

We explained how our platform worked: drivers could find loads directly, without going through intermediaries. In just one month, around 4,000 drivers signed up. It cost us far less than hiring marketers or running targeted ads.

— How did the first version of TIRGO work?

— At first, it was a freight marketplace: anyone could post a request to move cargo from point A to point B, and drivers would offer their own price. This way, we cut out the intermediaries. The platform ran for more than a year and a half, and over 5,000 drivers signed up during that time.

Our service was completely free at first because we wanted to build up a large user base before introducing monetization. But once we started charging, activity on the platform dropped sharply, by more than 70%.

— How did that drop in user activity change TIRGO’s business model?

— We were running out of money to keep developing the marketplace, so we shut it down completely and pivoted. To bring drivers and transport companies back, we launched online services for the paperwork and other things they needed on the road, including transit declarations, insurance, electronic border queues, and road toll payments.

We found that this part of the industry was also full of intermediaries. For years, carriers had relied on unofficial helpers to sort out these issues. We decided to formalize the process and provide the services directly, moving away from cash payments altogether and using official cashless payments instead.

“Companies couldn’t believe we were providing these services officially”

— How does TIRGO work today?

— Our product is a digital platform for international logistics. It includes the TIRGO Driver mobile app for drivers, TIRGO Merchant for transport companies and cargo owners, and three admin panels: one for transport companies, one for shippers, and our own internal operations panel. The freight marketplace is temporarily offline at the moment, but we plan to bring it back in 2027.

Everything in the system is synced in real time. Logistics teams can track the vehicle’s movement through the web panel, while drivers receive verified documents and trip status updates directly in the app.

— What documents can you prepare through the platform?

— Our basic service package covers the main things carriers need while on the road: electronic transit declarations for Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, international, cargo, and liability insurance, electronic queue bookings at border crossings, toll payments, and electronic navigation seals.

— Why don’t carriers handle these documents themselves? What makes the process so complicated or inconvenient that they have to rely on intermediaries?

— In theory, carriers can handle all of this themselves. In practice, though, they have to juggle several different services and documents at once: transit declarations, insurance, electronic border queues, road tolls, and other fees. And if there’s a mistake in the paperwork, it can cause problems later on the road or at the border. So we’ve automated some of these processes, including with the help of AI.

— How exactly does AI help?

— The driver or operator simply uploads a photo or scan of the accompanying documents to the system. Our AI module reads the text, pulls out the required data, and checks it for errors. The operator then verifies the result and uses the ready-to-go data to generate the declaration through our automated system with a single click.

The biggest advantage isn’t even speed, but scalability. The system lets us handle more requests without having to grow the team at the same rate. An employee can only work on one request at a time, while TIRGO can process several at once. Preparing a single document takes around 3–5 minutes.

“We expect to become profitable by October”

— How did you find your first customers?

— We got a list of accredited international carriers from Uzbekistan’s Ministry of Transport and started reaching out to them directly. We landed two large clients in the first week. At first, they wanted to make sure we actually understood the industry. Then they were surprised that we provided the services officially and accepted cashless payments. The market simply wasn’t used to working that way.

— How many customers does TIRGO have today, and what industries are they in?

— Today, 95–99% of our customers are transport companies with their own fleets. We currently work with around 120–150 transport companies, and 7,500 users are registered on the platform.

We also have a B2C offering for independent drivers who own their own trucks. Through the TIRGO Driver app, they get full access to our ecosystem and can use their phone to arrange transit documents, buy insurance, and book electronic border queues.

TIRGO’s main focus today is road freight, but we’re also starting to move into rail. Here, the platform is built for shippers and freight forwarding companies that handle rail transportation. It helps them calculate rates, prepare waybills and invoices, and complete customs declarations.

— What are TIRGO’s financials like today?

— In August 2026, our monthly recurring revenue reached $78,000–80,000. By October, we expect to become profitable, although initially by just a few thousand dollars.

— Does TIRGO already have any direct competitors?

— There isn’t really anything similar in Uzbekistan yet. There is a European company called E100 that works with fuel cards and toll payments, but its coverage is focused on Europe, as well as Russia and Kazakhstan. Our focus is specifically on the Uzbekistan–Kazakhstan corridor.

“We tested 15–20 hypotheses during the Silkway Accelerator”

— How are you funding TIRGO?

— So far, we’ve funded the project ourselves, using my own money and my partner’s. Building the first version of the product was expensive, and the relaunch after the pivot cost us roughly the same amount again.

— Are you planning to raise investment in the near future?

— We’re aiming to close a $500,000 round by the end of the year. The money will go toward regional expansion, growing our sales operation, and further product development. We plan to enter Kyrgyzstan first, where we’ve already registered a legal entity, and then expand into Russia. That will, of course, mean growing the team as well.

— Who’s on the team right now?

— We have two developers and 6–7 support operators who work around the clock, helping customers with service requests and customs clearance. There are 19 of us in total. Four team members work from our office in Shymkent, while the rest are based in Uzbekistan.

— Who owns a stake in the company?

— There are officially two co-founders: me and my partner, who isn’t involved in the day-to-day running of the company. I don’t disclose the exact size of my stake, but I still hold a controlling interest.

Besides us, three other people have also become shareholders in the company: Babur Nigmonbekov, who has been with us since the very beginning, our CTO Petr Chizhov, and angel investor Bakhrom Abdukadirov. He has been advising us on venture-related matters for more than two years and recently received an option in TIRGO while we were taking part in the Silkway Accelerator program by Astana Hub and Google for Startups.

— What did you get out of the accelerator?

— It gave us a real boost in three key areas. First, we started putting much more structure around our operations, and we’re still working on that today.

Second, we learned how to test hypotheses quickly. During the accelerator, we tried out 15–20 ideas, including offering our AI declaration tool as a standalone product to individual customers. And third, we became much faster at making decisions based on data, with a clearer rationale behind them.

— Where do you see TIRGO in five years?

— We want to keep developing the product and growing our presence in new markets, with the goal of turning TIRGO into an international freight ecosystem. I could also see us selling the company to a strategic buyer in the future, such as a major bank, logistics company, or tech ecosystem.