Uzbek entrepreneur Behzod Zufarov set out to solve a problem that has existed in international freight transportation for years: paperwork. His company, TIRGO, initially tried to build a marketplace connecting cargo owners directly with truck drivers. The model attracted thousands of drivers, but when the company introduced monetization, platform activity dropped by more than 70%.
That failure forced TIRGO to change direction. The company eventually shifted from being a simple freight marketplace to digitizing the operational processes surrounding international transportation — including transit declarations, insurance, electronic queues, road payments and other documents.
Today, AI is used to extract and verify information from freight documents, while TIRGO provides the resulting data to operators for final confirmation. In August 2026, the company’s monthly recurring revenue reached $78,000–$80,000. TIRGO expects to become operationally profitable in October.
It started with an $800 intermediary fee
Zufarov had spent around 15 years working in international trade and logistics before launching TIRGO. The idea reportedly emerged in 2018 after his company arranged transportation for cargo from Iran. The agreed transportation price was $4,800, but the driver received $4,000. The remaining $800 went to an intermediary. That experience raised a straightforward business question: if an intermediary is essentially connecting a shipper with a driver, can technology eliminate part of that cost? The first idea was therefore not an AI-powered logistics platform. It was a marketplace.
The first model was built around drivers
TIRGO’s initial concept was simple: a cargo owner would post a transportation request, while drivers could respond with their offers. The company initially relied on Telegram channels, advertisements and personal connections to find drivers. Later, the team began developing a dedicated platform.
The timing was not ideal. In 2018, according to Zufarov, many truck drivers were still not accustomed to using mobile applications, so the project was put on hold. The idea returned after the pandemic. TIRGO’s MVP was eventually launched in the summer of 2022. To attract its first users, the team went directly to the source.
Twelve employees went to truck queues on the Uzbekistan–Kazakhstan border and spoke with drivers in person. Within a month, around 4,000 drivers registered on the platform. More than 5,000 drivers eventually joined during the marketplace period. But registration numbers alone did not solve the company’s biggest problem: monetization.
TIRGO initially offered the service for free. The strategy was to build a large user base first and monetize it later. Once the company introduced a paid model, however, activity on the platform fell by more than 70%. This became the turning point.
Instead of continuing to invest in the marketplace, TIRGO temporarily shut it down and began looking for a different problem within the same logistics ecosystem. The team focused on something every international carrier had to deal with regardless of which marketplace they used: This pivot ultimately became the foundation of TIRGO’s current business.
From freight marketplace to logistics infrastructure
Today, TIRGO offers a range of services for international carriers, including:
- Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan transit declarations;
- international insurance;
- cargo and civil liability insurance;
- electronic border-queue booking;
- payments for toll roads;
- electronic navigation seals;
- freight and transportation management tools.
The platform also has a dedicated TIRGO Driver application, while logistics companies can manage operations through a web interface. According to TIRGO’s website, the company is building a broader digital logistics platform covering cargo placement, carrier selection, price comparison, secure transactions, shipment tracking and document management. The company also aims to support not only road transportation but rail, sea, air and multimodal logistics.
One of the more practical parts of TIRGO’s technology is its document-processing system. Instead of manually entering information from every CMR, invoice, packing list or customs document, an operator can upload a scan or photo. The system then:
reads the document → extracts the required information → checks the data → prepares it for processing.
The operator then reviews and confirms the result. According to the company, processing a document takes around 3–5 minutes. TIRGO says its system uses OCR and multimodal AI to extract information from logistics documents. It can also assign confidence levels to individual fields, allowing operators to focus their attention on information that requires verification.
This is important because the goal is not simply to replace a human operator. The bigger opportunity is to let the same team process a significantly larger number of documents without increasing headcount at the same rate.
120–150 transport companies and 7,500 users
According to Zufarov, between 120 and 150 transport companies currently work with TIRGO, while the total number of users has reached around 7,500. Between 95% and 99% of its customers are transportation companies with their own fleets. Independent truck owners can also use the company’s services through TIRGO Driver.
The company has also started expanding into railway logistics. The new direction is expected to include tariff calculations, preparation of cargo documents and invoices, and assistance with customs declarations.
How did TIRGO reach $80,000 a month?
The company’s most notable current metric is its recurring revenue. In August 2026, TIRGO’s monthly recurring revenue reached approximately $78,000–$80,000. The company expects to generate several thousand dollars in operating profit by October. TIRGO is also planning to raise around $500,000 by the end of 2026.
The planned capital would be used to expand the product, build its sales team and enter new markets. Kyrgyzstan is expected to be the company’s next major market. TIRGO has already registered a legal entity there. Russia is also being considered as a subsequent market.
TIRGO’s story is interesting because the company did not discover an entirely new market. It found a new way to monetize an existing one. International freight transportation already generates enormous amounts of data and documentation. A single shipment can involve carriers, cargo owners, customs authorities, insurers, border systems, road-payment services and logistics operators. For years, many of these processes have remained fragmented across different systems and service providers.
TIRGO’s strategy is to bring more of them into a single digital workflow. According to the company’s website, its platform currently covers routes involving more than 50 countries and 500 cities. The company is therefore moving away from the original idea of simply helping a shipper find a truck.
Its larger ambition is to become a digital infrastructure layer for international logistics — from finding transportation and managing documents to tracking shipments and handling different modes of transport.
And perhaps the most important part of the story is how the company got there. TIRGO started with an attempt to remove an $800 intermediary fee. It built a marketplace, attracted thousands of drivers, introduced monetization and lost more than 70% of its activity. Instead of abandoning the market, the company changed the problem it was solving. Four years after launching its MVP, that pivot has turned into a business reporting around $80,000 in monthly recurring revenue.
