i2i Ventures spotlighted two companies working within the trucking and freight sector across emerging markets, CARGON, which operates across Georgia, Central Asia, the Caucasus, and Europe, and Truck It In, which operates within Pakistan and counts i2i Ventures among its investors. The feature brought together CARGON’s Co-founder and Chief Operating Officer Niko Turabelidze and Truck It In’s Co-founder and CEO Muhammad Sarmad Farooq to discuss a sector that is often described as broken but which also represents a substantial opportunity for disruption, with the combined addressable market described as roughly 40 billion dollars across Central Asia and 25 billion dollars within Pakistan alone.
A central thread of the discussion addressed how many trucking and logistics startups roughly six to seven years ago initially framed themselves as the Uber for trucking, a positioning that made early-stage ventures more legible to international investors but ultimately proved too simplistic given the complexity and nuance inherent to the freight sector. Both CARGON and Truck It In have since moved beyond this initial framing, expanding into financing services and launching transport management solutions as their businesses matured, reflecting a broader pattern among emerging market logistics startups that survived their earliest years by evolving past the simplified platform models that first attracted investor interest.
The discussion also addressed how macroeconomic uncertainty and regional conflict, including the impact of the Russia-Ukraine war and tensions related to Iran, have affected logistics players operating in these regions, with both founders sharing how their organisations navigated these disruptions and built resilience into their operations as a result. Given the physical, cross-border nature of trucking and freight work, logistics companies in these regions face a level of exposure to geopolitical disruption that many other technology sectors are comparatively insulated from, making organisational resilience a more immediate operational concern rather than an abstract risk management consideration.
On the subject of artificial intelligence, both founders agreed that a fully AI-first approach would not work in trucking given how human and relationship-driven the industry remains, even as both CARGON and Truck It In are actively using AI to optimise internal processes and workflows. This nuanced stance reflects a broader pattern emerging across logistics technology, where AI serves as a tool for operational efficiency rather than a wholesale replacement for the human relationships and judgment that continue to underpin freight and trucking operations in these markets.
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