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Deepak Chhugani

Ecuador native, Indian parents, born in Kenya, passionate about startups and real estate

Deepak Chhugani is the Founder and CEO of Nuvocargo, a digital platform that facilitates cross-border trade between the United States and Mexico. He established the company in March 2019 and has since secured over $75 million in venture funding from prominent investors, including Y Combinator and Tiger Global Management.123

Born in Kenya to Indian parents and raised in Ecuador, Chhugani's background in logistics stems from his family's small logistics business. He studied finance in the U.S. and previously worked in investment banking, where he was involved in significant deals in Latin America at Bank of America Merrill Lynch.124

Chhugani has gained recognition for his entrepreneurial efforts, being named in Forbes' 30 Under 30 list for North America in 2023, highlighting his impact in the enterprise technology sector.4 Nuvocargo stands out as the first startup focused on digitizing logistics for the U.S.-Mexico trade corridor, addressing challenges such as language barriers and regulatory complexities.34

Highlights

Oct 23 · twitter

What kind of culture truly embraces AI? For my next Substack, we went deep on specific things we've found success with at @nuvocargo that have allowed us to consistently and frequently embrace AI with positive ROI.

We speak with tons of shippers, manufacturers, and PE firms who own shippers on a weekly basis who all ask us very similar questions:

  • How can I build a culture where all my teams embrace AI?
  • How can I deploy AI with real ROI?
  • Should I aim to build AI internally or partner with AI startups & 3rd parties?
  • How do you approach budget and experimentation with AI vendors?

In this next post, I try to address all of them and what's worked for us in fostering what we call "a culture of builders." This is for both technical and non-technical people inside Nuvocargo.

Specifically, I cover:

  • Should you build on LLMs yourself or buy AI tools from 3rd parties?
  • What is a “culture of builders?”
  • Talent required to embrace AI
  • Why small teams with a lot of autonomy & speed win
  • How to evaluate and partner with AI startups
  • Frequent company-wide demos to show what’s possible
  • Budgets for experimentation with AI

Feel free to take a read if you're interested in evolving your culture to embrace AI and the new innovations coming into the market!

What kind of culture truly embraces AI? For my next Substack, we went deep on specific things we've
Aug 11 · twitter

2025 has been the year the North America freight industry became obsessed with AI. It's all our customers, prospects, and partners want to talk about.

At @nuvocargo, we've been obsessed as well and we've built a TON – and I’m finally going to start sharing our learnings on LinkedIn more frequently and in a new Substack newsletter (link to subscribe in the next tweet).

Since launching Nuvo OS 18 months ago, we’ve quietly rebuilt Nuvocargo’s entire tech stack to become AI-native across our 3 products: managed transportation, freight brokerage, and customs.

Nuvocargo is uniquely positioned to deploy AI end to end and capture its full potential because we’re both a logistics company and a tech startup. That means we build directly on LLMs ourselves, but we also partner with many great AI companies & vendors.

We also have our own proprietary TMS and AI workflow engine (Nuvo OS) which was launched in 2024 so we don’t rely on a legacy TMS vendor that is decades old to modify UI’s and build AI native workflows for us – we do that ourselves. And unlike pure SaaS players, we can redesign org charts, processes, and team incentives to unlock the full potential of AI.

We’ve analyzed 100+ AI vendors, deployed many with real ROI, and built our own LLM-powered tools across the entire lifecycle of a truckload (email, WhatsApp, docs, voice, etc).

The Substack newsletter is intended to be short, tactical posts, mostly focused on where we’re seeing real ROI from AI across our platform and customer base including some demos and highlighting which startups & vendors we are having real success with.

As another important point, Nuvocargo grows both organically and via M&A so if you are interested in the AI buyout or Growth Buyout strategy at the intersection of PE and AI, you will find the newsletter interesting too!

Lastly, writing helps me clarify my own thinking and showcase what our R&D team has been shipping. They’ve built so much in the past year that it's been hard to keep up!

Below is our first post: How we used AI to automate 90% of POD (proof of delivery) validation.

2025 has been the year the North America freight industry became obsessed with AI. It's all our cust
Sep 21 · lavcaweek.org
Deepak J. Chhugani - LAVCA Week
Feb 1 · nuvocargo.com
Deepak Chhugani recognized in Forbes 30 under 30 North America ...
Feb 11 · mckinsey.com
Logistics Disruptors: A shared digital platform for US–Mexico logistics

Related Questions

What inspired Deepak Chhugani to start Nuvocargo?
How did Deepak Chhugani's background influence his career in logistics?
What challenges did Deepak face when launching Nuvocargo?
How has Nuvocargo's funding impacted its growth?
What makes Nuvocargo different from other logistics companies?
Deepak Chhugani
Deepak Chhugani, photo 1
Deepak Chhugani, photo 2
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Experience

Founder/CEO at Nuvocargo
Partner at Bayshore Investment Partners, Founder/CEO at The Lobby, Investment Banking - Latin America M&A at Merrill Lynch

Location

New York, New York, United States