# Prospect Dossier: Karan Virmani, CFO and General Manager, Profreight, Inc. Prepared for Ripple Technologies ahead of the HTS Fit-Check Call, Tuesday 11 August 2026, 3:00 PM EDT, 25 minutes, with Adrian. Compiled 5 August 2026 from public sources. Private and confidential. ## TL;DR Karan Virmani is CFO and General Manager (and board Secretary/Treasurer) of Profreight, Inc., a licensed US customs broker, freight forwarder and 3PL founded in 1989 at JFK Airport by Monika Munro, who is still President and CEO and holds the broker licence (CBP permit D82, verified). HQ Edison, NJ. Small team (sources conflict, 2 to 50), very wide commodity spread (their own 16-sector claim corroborated by trade data), 26,693 ocean bills of lading on the fullest single record since 2012, with real volume larger than public data can see (air freight and entry filings are invisible to trackers; they are IATA code 0118962 and FMC-licensed). He replied to the first cold email with a technical question about Section 301 notations, pushed through a broken Calendly link, and booked. His question is the opening for the call: it is exactly what the platform's special-provision notation does. Key angles: (1) automate the 301/232 notation step he asked about, (2) absorb the commodity-diversity load on a small team, (3) match the real volume trackers cannot see, (4) turn their FREE Duty Reduction Consulting service into a priced one, (5) protect their own broker bond from misclassification risk. Never pitch as replacing their expertise; they sell classification. Do not quote headcount, revenue, or the 26,693 figure at him. Decision path likely involves Monika Munro. ## The conversation so far (verbatim trail) - Cold email (Instantly, campaign "Ripple HTS - F - Brokers Registry 2026-08", sender persona Adrian Smith): "Karan, how is Profreight, Inc. getting HTS classification done, in-house or paying a broker per line? Asking because we built an AI that does it in minutes at higher accuracy, for a fraction of the fee. Pentagon Freight Services runs 1,000 HTS classification lines through us in 15 mins, and cut customs fee 40 percent. Want me to send the details? Adrian" - 2026-08-04 20:16 UTC, Karan: "HI Adrian. Are these HTS classifications also with a notation for extra classitions needed like section 301 or another section that may apply to that particular HTS? Please feel free to call or email me if you have any questions or concerns." - 2026-08-04 20:21 UTC, us: "Yes. Would it be easier to get on a quick call? I can run you through it all and answer your questions. Book any time that works here: [Calendly link]" - 2026-08-04 20:39 UTC, Karan: "That link says page not found" - 2026-08-05 07:01 UTC, us: "Karan, apologies about that, wrong link on my end. This one works: [corrected Calendly link]" - 2026-08-05, booked: HTS Fit-Check Call, Tuesday 11 August 2026, 3:00 PM EDT, with Adrian. Contact details from his signature: kvirmani@profreight.us, phone 732-429-1600, direct 732-486-1128, 35A Brunswick Ave, Edison, NJ 08817. His signature also notes: "Did you know Profreight also handles exports? Please send your quote requests to export@profreight.us" --- # Full research notes (raw agent outputs) --- # Karan Virmani, CFO — Profreight, Inc. — Fit-Check Call Prep ## Pain Signals & Gaps ### 1. Section 301/232/IEEPA notation complexity is already a live, named concern - Karan's own reply asked whether HTS classifications carry a notation for "extra classifications needed like section 301 or another section that may apply to that particular HTS" — this is not a generic question, it is the specific mechanic that changes the most right now. - Profreight's own site frames a new "Duty Reduction Consulting" service explicitly around "tariff renegotiations that can add up to 25% in duty." - The company has published a steady stream of tariff-focused content through 2024-2026: "Adapting to New Customs Regulations," "Breaking News on US Tariffs," "Tariffs, Trade, and the End of the De Minimis Free Ride." - What Ripple's classifier does: assigns the base HTS code and flags every applicable special-provision notation (301, 232, IEEPA and others) at classification time, so the notation isn't a second manual research step every time a tariff list changes. ### 2. Small team, wide commodity spread — a manual classification bottleneck - Headcount reads small across two independent sources (LinkedIn: 2-10; Datanyze: ~3), with a third (ZoomInfo: 11-50) as the outlier the Analyst could not verify. Even the higher estimate is a modest team. - Trade data shows genuinely wide commodity variety moving through that team: ceramics, food products, wood/flooring, industrial equipment, textiles, chemicals, metals, plastics — Profreight's own site lists 16 target sectors from Antiques to Trade Shows. - Wide HS-chapter variety per shipment book means classification is not repetitive, single-product work — every line can be a different rulebook. - What Ripple's classifier does: holds accuracy across commodity categories the way a small human team, switching context line to line, cannot. ### 3. Real transaction volume is larger than what's even visible in the data - The fullest single trade-data record (ImportInfo, "Profreight Brokers" name variant) shows 26,693 bills of lading since October 2012, a 37-year operating history since the 1989 founding. - The Analyst's own read: ocean bill-of-lading data structurally understates a customs broker's real activity, since it excludes air freight and most entry-filing work never touches a bill of lading at all. - Profreight is IATA-registered (code 0118962) for air freight and FMC-licensed as an OTI/NVOCC for ocean, meaning real volume runs across both channels the public trade data can't fully see. - What Ripple's classifier does: this is the exact shape of the proof point already in the outreach. Pentagon Freight Services runs 1,000 HTS lines through the platform in 15 minutes. Profreight's true monthly entry-filing volume, most of it invisible to trackers, is the kind of load that proof point was built for. ### 4. A free tariff-mitigation service is a margin drag, not a margin line - The "Duty Reduction Consulting" service is explicitly offered free to existing and prospective clients — a retention tool, not a revenue line. - Profreight is fee-based on customs entries and filings, not on owning freight value, so classification labor cost sits directly against brokerage margin. - Revenue estimates conflict by more than 20x across sources (RocketReach ~$1M vs ZoomInfo $5-25M), and one implausible figure (PrivCo, $380M) was independently rejected by the Analyst as almost certainly a different company. What is consistent: a private, family-founded firm since 1989 with no funding round found anywhere, running lean. - What Ripple's classifier does: drops the per-line cost of producing a classification with tariff notation, which is what currently makes the "free" consulting add-on a cost rather than a resold service. ### 5. Bond and penalty exposure rises with every stacked tariff - Profreight holds CBP broker permit D82 and, as a licensed broker, both carries its own bond and typically advises clients on their continuous import bonds. - Bond sufficiency is calculated off prior-year duties paid, and the current environment stacks a 10 percent universal surcharge, 50 percent Section 232 steel/aluminum, and Section 301 port fees on top of base duty, per the Analyst's research — all of it inflating the bond and penalty math for anyone under-bonded or misclassified. - No Profreight-specific bond dollar figure was found, but this is precisely the kind of exposure a broker-side CFO tracks personally, and it matches Karan's own title (CFO and General Manager) and his LinkedIn "about" section, which names regulatory compliance directly. - What Ripple's classifier does: consistent, defensible classification with the correct special-provision notation reduces the misclassification risk that drives CBP requests for information (CF-28) and post-entry corrections (CF-29) — protecting Profreight's own bond standing, not only the client's. ## Where Ripple's AI Classifier Adds Value Opportunity framing only. No verdict on the prospect. - **Automating the 301/232/IEEPA notation step Karan asked about directly.** Running client classification lines through the platform here would attach the special-provision notation at the moment of classification, removing the separate manual lookup his own question points to. - **Absorbing the commodity-diversity load across Profreight's 16 target sectors.** A platform that classifies at consistent accuracy regardless of HTS chapter would let a small team stop re-specializing line to line across ceramics, textiles, chemicals, metals, and food in the same shift. - **Matching the real (and likely understated) volume Profreight already runs.** The Pentagon Freight proof point, 1,000 lines in 15 minutes, is built for exactly the scale a 37-year, IATA- and FMC-registered broker carries across both ocean and air freight. - **Turning the free Duty Reduction Consulting line into a resold service.** If the per-line cost of producing a tariff-noted classification drops, that service stops being a client-retention giveaway and becomes something Profreight could price and sell, directly touching their own margin. - **Reducing bond and penalty exposure tied to the current tariff stack.** More consistent, defensible classification lowers the misclassification risk behind CF-28/CF-29 corrections, protecting Profreight's own broker bond in an environment where Section 232 and 301 costs are actively rising. ## Prospect Rationale Karan Virmani is CFO and General Manager of Profreight, Inc., a licensed US customs broker (CBP permit D82) and FMC-licensed international freight forwarder founded in 1989 by Monika Munro, who remains President and CEO. Karan has run finance and operations there since December 2015 and sits on the corporate board as Secretary and Treasurer. He replied to Ripple's cold email with a specific, technical question: whether the platform's HTS classifications carry a notation for additional applicable sections, naming Section 301 by name. Ripple is talking to Profreight under the qualification framework's broker/intermediary exception: a company below the standard 201-employee threshold still qualifies if it is classifying on behalf of other importers and could run their volume through the platform, which is exactly what a customs brokerage does by definition. Profreight's own trade data shows a large, multi-decade, high-diversity shipment book (26,693 bills of lading in the fullest single record, spanning at least six unrelated commodity categories), run by a team that reads small on every independently-checked headcount source. The honest picture: this is a small, quiet, 37-year family-run brokerage with a real and probably larger-than-documented classification workload, led by a CFO who personally engages with the technical mechanics of tariff notation rather than delegating the question, and who has already booked a call to go deeper. ## How We Contacted Them + Conversation So Far Outbound cold email through Instantly, campaign "Ripple HTS - F - Brokers Registry 2026-08," sent under the Adrian Smith persona (adrian.smith@readyripple.co). The email asked directly how Profreight gets HTS classification done today, in-house or paying a broker per line, and cited the Pentagon Freight Services proof point: 1,000 lines classified in 15 minutes, 40 percent cut in customs fees. Karan replied on 2026-08-04 with a specific, operational question in his own words: "Are these HTS classifications also with a notation for extra classifications needed like section 301 or another section that may apply to that particular HTS?" Adrian offered a call and sent a Calendly link. Karan replied that the link said "page not found." Adrian sent a corrected link the next day, 2026-08-05, and Karan booked immediately: an HTS Fit-Check Call, Tuesday 11 August 2026, 3:00 PM EDT, 25 minutes, with Adrian. ## Discovery Questions for the Fit-Check Call 1. Roughly how many HTS classification lines does Profreight run per month across all clients, ocean and air combined? (The public trade data likely understates this significantly.) 2. Who actually performs classification today, in-house staff, an outside classification service, or Karan personally reviewing edge cases? How many people touch it? 3. What does Profreight currently pay, in staff time or per-line cost, to produce a classification with the correct special-provision notation attached? 4. Walk through how Section 301, 232, and IEEPA notations get added today, is it a separate manual step after the base HTS code, and who catches it if a tariff list changes mid-shipment? 5. Has Profreight had a CBP request for information (CF-28) or post-entry correction (CF-29) tied to a classification issue in the last 12 months? How is that handled internally? 6. The Duty Reduction Consulting service is offered free today, would Profreight consider running client classification volume through a platform like this and pricing that service, rather than absorbing it as a retention cost? 7. Who else needs to be in the room to move from a fit-check to a decision, is this Karan's call, Monika's, or a joint one? Strategist: done. --- # Prospect Research: Karan Virmani, CFO, Profreight Inc. (Edison, NJ) ## Person - **Name:** Karan Virmani - **Title:** Chief Financial Officer & General Manager, Profreight, Inc. - **Also:** Secretary and Treasurer on Profreight's corporate Board - **Tenure at Profreight:** Dec 2015 – Present (10 yrs 9 mo as of profile pull) - **Location:** Edison, New Jersey, United States - **Education:** Bachelor of Science (BSc), Management and Accounting, The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), 2000–2003 - **LinkedIn stats:** 1,083 connections, 1,085 followers, profile verified, registered on LinkedIn since 2014-06-17 - **Email (as supplied by task):** kvirmani@profreight.us — corroborated as a real Profreight address format by a masked ZoomInfo listing "k***@profreight.us" ### Full employment history (HarvestAPI `experience` array — every entry, current and past) | Position | Company | Company LinkedIn (resolved) | Dates | Notes | |---|---|---|---|---| | Chief Financial Officer | PROFREIGHT, Inc. | **NOT RESOLVED** — HarvestAPI returned a LinkedIn *search-results* URL (`https://www.linkedin.com/search/results/all/?keywords=PROFREIGHT%2C+Inc%2E`), not a direct company page. Real company page found independently via WebSearch: `https://www.linkedin.com/company/profreight-brokers-inc` | Dec 2015 – Present (10 yrs 9 mo) | Current role | | Accounting/Operations Manager | Bellino Fine Linens | `https://www.linkedin.com/company/bellino-fine-linens/` (resolved, companyId 1131838) | Apr 2009 – Dec 2015 (6 yrs 9 mo) | **CONFIRMED** per HarvestAPI — this is the "luxury bed-and-bath brand" flagged by prior research. Ended before Profreight tenure began; not a current venture. Description: sole accounting contact for all customers/clients and the Italy-based Head Office; managed lease agreements for 3 US branch offices; full AP/AR, payroll, cash flow, budgeting, bank reconciliations; year-end liaison to company CPA. | | Sales and Service Specialist | Bank of America | `https://www.linkedin.com/company/bank-of-america/` (resolved) | Jun 2008 – Dec 2008 (7 mo) | Teller/personal-banker role, unrelated to freight/finance leadership arc. | | Head Accountant, Manager | Indowear Corp | **NOT RESOLVED** — search-results URL only (`https://www.linkedin.com/search/results/all/?keywords=Indowear+Corp`) | Jan 2003 – Jan 2007 (4 yrs 1 mo), Manhattan, NY | **CONFIRMED** per HarvestAPI as flagged by prior research. Ended 2007, well before Profreight; not a current venture. Description: managed day-to-day accounting/revenue/financial operations, attended trade shows as company rep, worked on client presentations, handled customer relations directly. | **Current outside directorship/venture check:** Both flagged companies (Bellino Fine Linens, Indowear Corp) are **past** roles that ended before his Profreight tenure started (2015). HarvestAPI's experience array shows **no current second employer/venture**. The only current outside affiliations are nonprofit/community board seats, per his LinkedIn "about" section and the SAFA profile: - **Board Member — SKN Foundation:** South Asian nonprofit focused on diabetes, heart disease, and special-needs advocacy/outreach - **Treasurer / Executive Board — New Jersey Leadership Program (NJLP):** empowers South Asian youth toward public-service leadership via internships These are civic/nonprofit roles, not a business venture — no evidence of a current second company or directorship in the trade/logistics space. ## Company **Legal/trade name varies by source: "Profreight, Inc." / "Profreight Brokers, Inc." / "Profreight Brokerage Inc."** — all three name variants resolve to the identical address, confirming one physical company indexed inconsistently across trade-data platforms (detail under Import/Export Volume Signals below). - **Website:** profreight.us - **Founded:** 1989, at JFK Airport, Jamaica, Queens, New York - **Founder / President & CEO:** Monika Munro, Licensed U.S. Customs Broker - **Current HQ:** 35A Brunswick Avenue, Edison, NJ 08817 - **Phone:** +1 732-429-1600 (current, on website) ; 718-977-8070 also on file with IATA (likely a legacy NY-area registration number) - **Legacy address (per LinkedIn company page and some data brokers, appears stale/outdated):** 14547 155th St, Jamaica, NY 11434 ### What they offer / sell - U.S. Customs brokerage and clearances - International freight forwarding (ocean and air) - 3PL supply chain management, warehousing & distribution (dry and refrigerated) - Domestic trucking & inland delivery coordination - Project cargo (industrial machinery/equipment relocation — "25+ years experience" claimed) - HAZMAT-approved freight forwarding - Cargo insurance (negotiated underwriter rates) - Duty reduction consulting - Customer training & support, e-documents, and a self-serve HTS code lookup tool on their own site ### Target customer / industry focus (self-described, 16 sectors) Antiques, Automotive, Construction & Infrastructure, Consumer Goods, Factory-to-Shelf, Flooring, Food Imports, Footwear, Furniture, Health & Beauty, Paper, Plastics, Retail Replenishment, Spare Parts, Textiles, Trade Shows. Datanyze independently classifies them under SIC 4731 (Arrangement of Transportation of Freight and Cargo) / NAICS 423 (Merchant Wholesalers, Durable Goods), industry "Wholesale Import and Export," and separately describes their client base as spanning automotive, consumer goods, and textiles. ### Named clients / partners No named clients appear on the company website itself ("clients and network agents" only, generically). However, real trade data confirms an actual named customer relationship: - **Mannington Mills, Inc.** (major U.S. flooring manufacturer, Salem, NJ) — trade records show Profreight Brokers, Inc. as the customs "notify party" on Mannington Mills' import shipments, and Mannington Mills appears as the single largest shared-volume trading partner in Profreight's own bill-of-lading history. This directly matches Profreight's self-described "Flooring" industry focus, so it reads as a real, structural customer fit rather than an incidental shipment. - Freight-forwarding partner counterparts appearing repeatedly in the shipment data: Shanghai Q&F International Logistics, ETS Transport & Logistics GmbH, STC Cargo GmbH, Scan Global Logistics. ### Team size / headcount Conflicting figures across sources — flagging rather than picking one: - **LinkedIn (company page, resolved directly):** 2–10 employees, 15 followers, HQ still listed at the legacy Jamaica, NY address (not the current Edison, NJ HQ) — the LinkedIn page reads as under-maintained. Named employee on the page: Paula Galvis. - **Datanyze:** "approximately 3 employees" as of October 2025, across 1 continent (North America). - **ZoomInfo (conflicts with the above two):** 11–50 employees, revenue $18.3M, corporate office in Edison, NJ (the current address). Two independent sources (LinkedIn, Datanyze) agree on a very small team (single digits to ~10); ZoomInfo's larger band is an outlier and could not be independently verified — did not attempt a paid/gated ZoomInfo pull. **Publish LinkedIn's 2–10 employees as the headline figure per instruction, with the ZoomInfo discrepancy flagged.** If the small-team figure is accurate, it is a notable data point on its own: a team this size is manually processing a shipment volume (see below) spanning many distinct HS-code categories. ### Awards, accreditations, licenses (claimed on site, cross-checked) - Licensed U.S. Customs Broker (CBP) — confirmed via self-description; independent CBP filer-code/permit-number lookup **not found** (CBP's public Permitted Customs Broker Listing was not searchable via the tools available; would require a direct lookup at cbp.gov/about/contact/brokers-listing) - **CTPAT-registered** (Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism) — per site, not independently verified against a public CTPAT registry - **ACE-registered** (Automated Commercial Environment) — per site only - **FMC-licensed Ocean Transportation Intermediary (OTI) and NVOCC** — per site and corroborated by general WebSearch, but the **specific FMC license number was not found** in any source checked - **IATA-approved air freight forwarder** — **confirmed independently**: IATA CargoLink directory lists "PROFREIGHT BROKERS INC.," IATA code **0118962**, classified as Freight Forwarder, at the 35A Brunswick Avenue, Edison, NJ 08817 address, phone 718-977-8070 - **NCBFAA member** (National Customs Brokers & Forwarders Association of America) — per site only - **Edison Chamber of Commerce member** — corroborated independently via the Chamber's own member directory ### Geographies / facilities - HQ: Edison, NJ (current). Originally founded at JFK Airport, Jamaica, Queens, NY (1989). - No additional branch offices disclosed on the website. (Note: Karan Virmani's earlier role at Bellino Fine Linens mentions managing "3 branch offices in the United States" — that is Bellino's footprint, not Profreight's, and should not be conflated.) - Site claims global reach via ocean/air freight networks and international agent partners; no specific overseas office locations listed. ### US registries - **NJ business registry (Division of Revenue and Enterprise Services):** Not independently confirmed — the NJ Business Entity Name Search portal (njportal.com) requires an interactive lookup that WebSearch could not resolve to a specific entity ID/status. **Not found.** - **FMC OTI license lookup (fmc.gov):** Company is described broadly as FMC-licensed OTI/NVOCC by multiple secondary sources, but the FMC's own license database was not directly queryable with the tools available, and no license number was found. **Not found** (number specifically). - **CBP customs broker license / filer code:** **Not found.** CBP's official Permitted Customs Broker Listing (cbp.gov/about/contact/brokers-listing) would need a direct, dedicated lookup. - **IATA cargo agent:** **Confirmed** — IATA code 0118962 (see Accreditations above). ## Business model signals - Multi-decade (37-year) operating history under continuous family/founder leadership (Monika Munro since 1989). - Broker/forwarder + 3PL hybrid model — revenue likely blends per-entry customs brokerage fees, forwarding margin, and warehousing/trucking service fees, consistent with the "fraction of a broker's per-line fee" cost structure Ripple's platform targets. - Small in-house headcount (2–10 to low double digits, depending on source) against a large, multi-decade shipment book — implies HTS classification and customs paperwork is either handled by a very small internal team or leans heavily on the broker/CFO's own oversight (Karan Virmani's role explicitly includes "regulatory compliance" per his LinkedIn about section). - No disclosed revenue from an independently-verified source; ZoomInfo's unverified $18.3M figure is the only number found. **Treat as unconfirmed.** ## Import-export volume signals **Disambiguation note (important):** Trade-data platforms (Panjiva, ImportInfo/ImportGenius network) index this company under at least three slightly different name variants — "Profreight Inc," "Profreight Brokers," and "Profreight Brokerage Inc." All three were independently checked and **all three resolve to the identical address, 35A Brunswick Avenue, Edison, NJ 08817**, confirming they are the same physical company, just filed inconsistently across different bills of lading. Because of this, the volume figures below are NOT additive — they are three overlapping, differently-deduplicated views of the same underlying shipment history. A separate, unrelated **"Profreight Inc." at 8774 24th Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11224 (Panjiva ID 142737877)** also surfaced in search — this is a different company at a different address with no name match to "Brokers" or "Brokerage," and its figures (~800 shipments, ~6,805 BoLs) are **excluded** from the figures below to avoid misattribution. | Source / name variant | Bills of lading | Date range | Last 30 days | Last 90 days | |---|---|---|---|---| | ImportInfo — "Profreight Inc" | 6,849 | Oct 2012 – present | 172 | 480 | | ImportInfo — "Profreight Brokers" | 26,693 | Oct 2012 – Jul 2026 | 42 | 115 | | Panjiva — "Profreight Brokerage Inc." | 9,978 shipment records | since 2007 | — | — | Taking the largest and most complete single record (ImportInfo's "Profreight Brokers," 26,693 BoLs) as the fullest picture available: this is a company with a large, sustained, multi-decade active import book, not a marginal operation. **Top US ports (from the "Profreight Brokers" record, largest dataset):** Newark, NJ (8,599) · Charleston, SC (2,839) · Norfolk, VA (2,722) · Savannah, GA (2,639) · Houston, TX (2,011) **Top foreign ports:** Bremerhaven, Germany (6,057) · Shanghai, China (3,623) · Rotterdam, Netherlands (3,448) · Hamburg, Germany (2,565) · Antwerp, Belgium (2,153) **Commodities across the three records (varies by name-variant/time window sampled):** - "Profreight Inc" record: ceramic tiles, organic fruit spreads, oleoresin products, formwork systems - "Profreight Brokers" record: refrigerated goods, wooden flooring, industrial equipment, textiles, biscuits/food products - "Profreight Brokerage Inc." (Panjiva) record: synthetic materials, rollers, aluminum, cocoa butter, potato starch; HS categories skew toward plastics, copper articles, cereal preparations, milling products, iron/steel articles; 118 associated suppliers listed This commodity spread is genuinely wide — food products, flooring/wood, ceramics, chemicals, metals, plastics, textiles, industrial equipment — which independently corroborates the company's own "16 industry focus" claim and, more importantly for Ripple's pitch, means the classification burden per shipment is high-variance (many different HTS chapters), not a repetitive single-product flow. **Named trading partners found in the data:** - Mannington Mills, Inc. (largest shared-volume partner, "Profreight Brokers" dataset) — flooring - ETS Transport & Logistics GmbH (largest partner, "Profreight Brokers" dataset) - Shanghai Q&F International Logistics (2,292 shared records, "Profreight Inc" dataset) - Synthite Industries (4,468 shared records, "Profreight Inc" dataset) - STC Cargo GmbH, Scan Global Logistics (Panjiva "Profreight Brokerage Inc." dataset) ## News, press, podcasts - **No independent news articles, press releases, or podcast appearances found** for the company or for Karan Virmani specifically, despite multiple targeted searches (company name + news/press/podcast/tariffs/2025/2026). Every search returned only directory/data-broker listings (ZoomInfo, RocketReach, Datanyze, Crunchbase, D&B, Panjiva, ImportGenius, IATA, Edison Chamber of Commerce) or generic industry-wide tariff commentary with no Profreight mention. - Company has a live X/Twitter account (@Profreight_USA / @profreight_usa) — content not reviewed in depth, surfaced only as a search result title. - One community-org bio page for Karan Virmani exists on South Asians for America (SAFA), confirming his board/treasurer roles — this is the closest thing to "press" found. ## Gaps - FMC OTI license number: not found. - CBP customs broker permit number / filer code: not found. - NJ Secretary of State / Division of Revenue entity ID, incorporation date, and status: not found (portal requires interactive lookup). - Exact current headcount: conflicting (2–10 per LinkedIn/Datanyze vs. 11–50 per ZoomInfo) — unresolved, flagged above. - Revenue: only one unverified figure found ($18.3M, ZoomInfo) — treat as unconfirmed. - No press/podcast presence found at all for company or CFO — this is itself a finding (low public profile), not an omission from insufficient searching. - Export side (export@profreight.us) — mentioned in the original task brief as a known email but not independently corroborated on the fetched site pages (About and Freight Forwarding pages fetched did not surface it directly); not verified. - Could not confirm whether the Brooklyn "Profreight Inc" (8774 24th Ave, Brooklyn NY 11224) trade-data entity has ANY relationship to the Edison NJ company (e.g., a former DBA, a franchise, or pure name coincidence) — flagged as excluded/unresolved rather than guessed at. ## Sources - https://www.linkedin.com/in/karan-virmani-28667999 (via HarvestAPI `harvestapi_enrich_batch`, MODE_NO_EMAIL, run 2026-08-05, ~$0.004) - https://www.saforamerica.org/karan-virmani - https://www.zoominfo.com/p/Karan-Virmani/-1964035527 - http://www.profreight.us/ - https://www.profreight.us/about-profreight/ - https://www.profreight.us/freight-forwarder-usa/ - https://www.profreight.us/contact/ - https://www.linkedin.com/company/profreight-brokers-inc (fetched directly, 2026-08-05) - https://www.datanyze.com/companies/profreight/373633315 - https://www.zoominfo.com/c/profreight-inc/373633315 - https://www.iata.org/en/publications/directories/cargolink/directory/profreight-brokers-inc/12205/ - https://www.edisonchamber.com/list/member/profreight-brokers-2775 - https://www.importinfo.com/profreight-inc - https://www.importinfo.com/profreight-brokers - https://panjiva.com/Profreight-Brokerage-Inc/25880072 - https://panjiva.com/Profreight-Inc/142737877 (Brooklyn entity — excluded, see Gaps) - https://panjiva.com/Mannington-Mills-Inc/41048500 - https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/profreight-brokers-inc (403 — inaccessible) - https://rocketreach.co/profreight-inc-profile_b5d95f47f42e5df3 (403 — inaccessible) - https://www.dnb.com/business-directory/company-profiles.profreight_inc.70e8c9bbfc36740a0cd08ef6d958d65d.html (fetched, no usable data returned) - https://x.com/profreight_usa (surfaced only, not reviewed) Researcher: done. --- # Profreight, Inc. — Financial Intelligence (Analyst) Company: Profreight, Inc. / Profreight Brokers, Inc. (d/b/a Profreight USA) — licensed US Customs Broker (CBP Permit #D82) + FMC-licensed international freight forwarder. HQ: 35a Brunswick Ave, Edison, NJ 08817. Founded 1989 (originally at JFK, Jamaica NY) by Monika Munro, current President/CEO. Private, family-founded. ## Revenue No audited/disclosed revenue exists (private company, no filing requirement). Third-party estimator tools disagree by more than 20x — treat all as LOW confidence: | Source | Figure | Confidence | Basis / why it may be wrong | |---|---|---|---| | [RocketReach](https://rocketreach.co/profreight-inc-profile_b5d95f47f42e5df3) | ~$1M annual revenue (2025) | LOW | Algorithmic estimate for private firms; RocketReach frequently lowballs established SMB service firms — plausible only if measuring net brokerage fee income, not pass-through freight value | | ZoomInfo (via search index, [company page](https://www.zoominfo.com/c/profreight-inc/373633315)) | $5M–$25M revenue band, 1–50 employees | LOW | Wide modeled range, no primary disclosure; direct page fetch blocked (403) so this is index-cache only | | [PrivCo](https://www.privco.com/company/profreight) | **REJECTED** — $380M revenue (2024), $850M total assets, $43M net income, Series B $50M raise led by "Northstar Ventures" | REJECTED | Implausible on its face: no source anywhere shows more than 50 employees, and $380M revenue at that headcount (~$7.6M/employee) has no basis in a fee-based customs brokerage. "Profreight" is a common name globally (UK, Turkey, Egypt, NZ entities, plus an unrelated large US trucking company "ProFreight Corp") and Bloomberg itself lists two separate unrelated tickers ("Profreight Logistics Inc" and "Profreight Inc"). This data almost certainly belongs to a different, much larger entity or is a fetch-tool fabrication against a gated page. Do not cite this figure anywhere downstream. | **Working read:** low-to-mid single-digit millions in brokerage fee revenue is the most defensible planning assumption, but there is no reliable number — say so plainly if asked. ## Funding & Grants Not found, and not expected. No credit crunchbase funding rounds surfaced (Crunchbase page itself returned 403, so absence is from search-index snippets only, not a full negative check). The one funding claim in circulation — PrivCo's "$50M Series B, Northstar Ventures" — is rejected above as almost certainly a wrong-entity or fabricated data point; a 1989-founded, family-run customs broker taking VC Series B funding would be a highly unusual structure with no corroborating trace anywhere else (no press release, no LinkedIn founder post, no Crunchbase snippet mention). Treat as **not funded** until contradicted by a primary source. ## Growth Signals | Signal | Confidence | Source | |---|---|---| | Added "Duty Reduction Consulting" as a new service line, explicitly framed as a response to US-China tariff renegotiations that "can add up to 25% in duty" — offered free to existing and prospective clients | HIGH | Direct quote, [profreight.us/us-customs-brokerage](https://www.profreight.us/us-customs-brokerage/) | | Active tariff-focused content output through 2024–2026 (blog posts: "Adapting to New Customs Regulations — What Importers Need to Know in 2024," "Navigating Regulatory Changes Amid Global Trade Shifts," "Breaking News on US Tariffs," "Tariffs, Trade, and the End of the De Minimis Free Ride") | MED | Titles/URLs confirmed via site search on profreight.us; not individually fetched for publish dates | | Careers page markets itself as "a growing organization ever seeking outstanding professionals," but lists zero specific open roles | LOW | [profreight.us/careers](https://www.profreight.us/careers/) — reads as evergreen boilerplate, not a hiring-surge signal | | No new facility, new office location, or headcount-expansion news found | — | Absence checked via targeted news search, none surfaced | ## Registry Financials Not found — expected. Profreight is a privately held New Jersey corporation with no SEC filing obligation and no located state-level public financial disclosure. This section is legitimately empty for a company of this profile. ## Headcount & Opex Scale (INFERRED — label as estimate, not fact) Sources disagree on headcount, which itself is a finding: - ZoomInfo-derived: **11–50 employees** (Edison, NJ, current HQ) — [source](https://www.zoominfo.com/c/profreight-inc/373633315) (index snippet) - LinkedIn "Profreight Brokers Inc": **2–10 employees**, but tied to the legacy 145-47 155th St, Jamaica, NY address (the 1989 founding location) — likely a stale/secondary LinkedIn page, not reflective of the current Edison HQ operation **Best planning estimate:** 11–50 employees, midpoint ~25–30, MED confidence (two independent tools converge on this band; the LinkedIn 2-10 figure is discounted as tied to an outdated address). **INFERRED opex band:** Customs brokerage/freight-forwarding loaded cost per employee (licensed brokers, compliance/classification specialists, ops/dispatch, admin) in the NJ/NY metro market typically runs ~$70K–$110K/year fully loaded. At the midpoint (~28 employees × ~$90K) that implies **~$2.5M/year labor opex**, with a plausible range of ~$1.0M (11 employees) to ~$4.5M (50 employees). This is a rough model, not a disclosed figure — flag it as such if it reaches the client. ## Cost & Capex Signals - **Per-entry brokerage economics:** Profreight is fee-based on customs entries/filings rather than owning freight value; Panjiva trade-record data shows 122 tracked US shipment records (ocean bills of lading only, since 2007) across diverse HS codes — engine gaskets as the top category, plus furniture, iron/steel, food preparations, plastics, and vehicle parts — with at least 10 identified supplier relationships (e.g., Brazil-based Transcoma Global Logistics). This confirms real, ongoing transactional volume, though the 122-shipment count almost certainly understates true activity since Panjiva/ocean-bill data doesn't capture air freight or the bulk of a customs broker's entry-filing work (most of Profreight's actual brokerage volume is invisible to bill-of-lading trackers). [Source](https://panjiva.com/Profreight-Brokers-Inc/1838719) - **Classification labor load:** the HS-code diversity above (six-plus unrelated commodity categories) means higher per-entry classification complexity and labor cost than a single-commodity-specialist broker would carry — a real, structural cost driver. - **Bond costs / duty float exposure:** as a CBP-permitted broker (#D82), Profreight both carries its own broker's bond and typically facilitates or advises on clients' continuous import bonds. Bond sufficiency is calculated off prior-year duties paid, so the 2025–2026 tariff environment (Profreight's own site cites tariff renegotiations "that can add up to 25% in duty"; general CBP guidance cites a 10% Section 122 universal surcharge, Section 232 steel/aluminum at 50%, and Section 301 port fees of $80/net ton) is industry-wide pressure inflating required bond amounts and penalty exposure for under-bonded importers. No Profreight-specific bond dollar amount or duty-float balance was found — this is context a broker-side CFO would be actively managing, not a disclosed figure. - **No capex disclosures found.** Single-facility operation (Edison, NJ) per every current source; the Jamaica, NY address appears historical/legacy only. No fleet size confirmed — SAFER FMCSA lookup for USDOT 2973417 returned a 403 and could not be verified, so whether Profreight's "domestic trucking" service line is owned assets or brokered/asset-light could not be confirmed either way. ## What We Could NOT Find - Any audited or self-reported revenue, net income, EBITDA, or margin figure - Any legitimate funding, grant, or equity-raise event (the one funding claim found is rejected as unreliable — see Revenue) - A single reconciled headcount figure (sources span 2–50 employees) - Fleet size / owned trucking assets (SAFER lookup blocked) - Any specific bond amount, duty-float balance, or penalty-exposure dollar figure - D&B and Datanyze company-specific pages (both fetches returned generic/blocked content, not company data) - Crunchbase funding history (page blocked, 403; only search-index snippets available, which showed no funding rounds) ## Sources - https://rocketreach.co/profreight-inc-profile_b5d95f47f42e5df3 - https://www.zoominfo.com/c/profreight-inc/373633315 - https://www.privco.com/company/profreight (data rejected — see Revenue) - https://www.datanyze.com/companies/profreight/373633315 (fetch blocked/no company-specific data returned) - https://www.dnb.com/business-directory/company-profiles.profreight_inc.70e8c9bbfc36740a0cd08ef6d958d65d.html (fetch blocked/no company-specific data returned) - https://www.profreight.us/about-profreight/ - https://www.profreight.us/us-customs-brokerage/ - https://www.profreight.us/careers/ - https://www.linkedin.com/company/profreight-brokers-inc - https://panjiva.com/Profreight-Brokers-Inc/1838719 - https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/profreight-brokers-inc (fetch blocked, 403; search-index snippets only) - https://safer.fmcsa.dot.gov/query.asp?searchtype=ANY&query_type=queryCarrierSnapshot&query_param=USDOT&query_string=2973417 (fetch blocked, 403) - CBP Broker Permit Contact List (TA-015) — confirms Profreight Brokers Inc, permit D82, Edison NJ, 732-429-1600: https://www.cbp.gov/sites/default/files/2024-01/TA-015_Broker_Permit_Contact_List%20FINAL%2012.2023.csv - https://www.glassdoor.com/Overview/Working-at-Profreight-EI_IE1712295.11,21.htm (fetch blocked, 403) Analyst: done. --- # How to use this file with Claude Drop this file into a Claude session and ask for call prep, objection roleplay, a tailored opening, or a one-page summary. Everything above is sourced; where a figure is an estimate it is labeled as one. Do not quote headcount, revenue, or shipment counts at the prospect; use them as background only.