Karan Wadhwa and Satyendra Sharma: The Two Founders Making Import-Export Easy for India

Every Indian shipment carries costs that never appear on the freight quote: a container loaded below capacity, a product classified under the wrong HS code, a document that does not match its pair, a booking deadline missed by a day.

Navaro, the import-export platform founded by Karan Wadhwa and Satyendra Sharma, is built to catch those costs before the cargo moves.

Between them, the two founders bring 32+ years of experience in global trade. They have spent their careers fixing other people’s shipments. With Navaro, they want every Indian importer and exporter to have that expertise in every shipment.

The Problem They Saw in the Market

Across three decades of moving cargo, the founders kept seeing the same pattern. Indian businesses were rarely losing money because their products were weak or their buyers unreliable. They were losing it in the gaps between the many people and papers a shipment has to pass through.

To ship a single container, an exporter deals with a freight forwarder, a customs broker, transporters, a shipping line and the buyer, and tracks it all across spreadsheets, emails and phone calls. Each party sees only its own piece of the shipment. Nobody sees the whole of it, and nobody plans it end to end before a delivery date is promised to the buyer.

The knowledge that protects a margin sits with a small number of experienced practitioners, most of them in port cities: how to load a container fully, which HS code applies, what the shipment will really cost on arrival, whether two documents match. Many small exporters cannot afford that expertise. A wrong HS code, a missing certificate or a missed cut-off can cost a small business lakhs, and for many it ends their willingness to try exporting again.

“Existing software records what already happened,” says Karan Wadhwa. “Nobody plans the shipment before the date is promised.”

That is the problem Karan Wadhwa and Satyendra Sharma set out to solve: to put the judgement of an experienced trade practitioner into one platform, available to every importer and exporter, on every shipment, before anything goes wrong.

From the Factory Floor to a Platform for Every Shipment

Navaro grew out of real shipments, not a whiteboard. Co-founder Satyendra Sharma began his career as a customs agent, moved into freight forwarding and went on to work with the micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) that make and ship India’s goods. Over 27 years he has worked almost every desk a shipment passes through.

In 2007, an exporter of sun visors shipping to the United States and Latin America was loading 18 pallets into every 40-foot container. Standing on the factory floor during loading, Satyendra Sharma noticed that each pallet sat on a wooden base 8 inches high, built tall for forklifts. He suggested a 3-inch base with two extra support blocks underneath. The next container carried 30 pallets, and the exporter’s logistics cost fell by 40 percent without a single change to the product.

In 2005, a handicraft exporter in Moradabad was trucking 30 to 40 containers a week to Nhava Sheva for a major US and European retail program, with inspections that forced double handling and tight sailing deadlines. Satyendra Sharma secured approval for loading and inspection at the factory itself and moved the cargo to sail from Mundra on the same vessel. Logistics costs fell 30 percent and volumes rose 20 percent. Twenty years later, the exporter still visits him whenever he is in Delhi.

Co-founder Karan Wadhwa built his career as a freight forwarder, managing shipments for some of India’s large enterprises as well as small and mid-sized exporters. He has also run his own import-export factory, so he understands the shipper’s side of the table as well as the service side.

“One of my clients was dealing with a European buyer who asked for his container dimensions before he asked for the price,” says Karan Wadhwa. “The buyer knew that what fits in the container decides the cost of every unit. That kind of knowledge should not depend on who you happen to know.” 

Navaro: India’s First Unified Import-Export Platform

Navaro is their answer. It brings the whole trade desk into one place, which is why the founders describe it as India’s first unified trade platform.

At its core is a proprietary knowledge base of Indian trade, built and checked by the founders: customs procedure, HS classification, Incoterms, documentation and port practice. Navaro does not stop at answering a trade question. It does the work, preparing the product classification, the landed cost, the packing list and the documents for the user. Work that once took hours takes minutes.

Those tools cover the full trade desk: a 3D container load plan, an HS code finder that explains its reasoning, duty and landed cost calculators, export document preparation, a checker that compares two shipping documents for mismatches before customs does, and container tracking once the cargo sails.

Shipment Planning That Starts From the Buyer’s Date

Picture a buyer who needs goods by 1 December. Working out when the cargo must leave the factory, which papers must be ready and which booking deadline cannot be missed usually takes hours of manual work and expertise most small exporters do not have in-house. One wrong date or form, and the ship sails without them.

Navaro’s shipment planner starts from the date the buyer needs the goods and works backwards to the factory gate. It first gives a feasibility verdict, whether the order can make that date at all, and then lays out every date, document and deadline in between.

It is the step most trade software skips, because most software only records a shipment after it has happened. Navaro plans it before the date is promised.

Expert Judgement, Built In

One principle shapes the whole platform: no date in a Navaro plan is guessed. Every date is calculated from fixed trade rules and verified shipping-lane data. Technology brings the speed, and Navaro uses AI only to explain, answer questions and flag anything unusual, with its sources shown. It never decides a date.

The knowledge underneath is checked against the founders’ own decades of practice before it goes in. When an error is found, a trade practitioner reviews it and turns the correction into a permanent rule, so the platform grows more accurate the more it is used. The result, in the founders’ words, is software speed with practitioner judgement.

“My interest in AI is practical, not theoretical,” says Karan Wadhwa. “I spent years doing import-export work manually: classification, costing, documentation. Most of it was pattern work that expertise could be encoded into. AI made that possible. What draws me is its ability to put specialist knowledge in the hands of people who could never afford access to it.”

Built for India’s Importers, Exporters and Freight Forwarders

Navaro is launching first with the businesses that already trade: established importers and exporters, and the freight forwarders who move shipments for many clients at once. “When one forwarder works smarter, every client behind them benefits,” says Karan Wadhwa.

The longer goal is bigger: to make a first export shipment achievable for any Indian MSME without hiring a consultant, wherever in the country it is based.

The Road Ahead for Navaro

For Satyendra Sharma, Navaro is the next chapter of a career spent solving problems one shipment at a time. With Navaro, the two founders want to solve them for thousands of Indian businesses at once.

“For years, exporters have called us when a shipment goes wrong,” says Satyendra Sharma. “Navaro puts that experience in their hands before anything goes wrong.”

About Navaro: Navaro is an import-export platform from India, founded by Karan Wadhwa and Satyendra Sharma. Built on the founders’ 32+ years of trade expertise, it helps importers, exporters and freight forwarders plan, cost, document and track international shipments in one place.

Explore  Navaro:  www.navaro.co.in