Rathna Sharad: Revolutionizing Cross-Border Shipping

Rathna Sharad is the founder and CEO of FlavorCloud, a company that provides a best-in-class cross-border logistics platform for brands worldwide to go global. Backed by its AI-optimized network, FlavorCloud’s mission is to simplify global e-commerce by removing all barriers to international shipping and trade compliance “anywhere to anywhere” while letting its customers focus on growing their businesses. Rathna is an engineer turned product leader and has been leading product organizations for more than 25 years.

As a founding member of the ad platform team at Microsoft and Product Leader for Bing ads, Rathna was fascinated by how they successfully connected brands to consumers via ads. Having experienced the pain of shopping international brands herself, Rathna saw that cross-border is the future. She was best suited to bridge these two worlds, thanks to her deep expertise in logistics, supply chain, and global trade enablement. Her first foray into the world of start-ups was a marketplace named Runway2Street, which she co-founded in 2012.

With over two decades of experience working in the global supply chain, international trade logistics, and modern e-commerce, Rathna and team created a ground-up cross-border logistics platform for their marketplace. No existing solution solved the immense challenges of global trade compliance and supply chain optimization. This realization eventually led to the inception of FlavorCloud in 2018 as a headless global logistics platform to simplify international shipping for direct-to-consumer, digitally native brands, and 3PL (third-party logistics) providers of all sizes. FlavorCloud enables brands-for the first time-to keep pace with the accelerated demand and ever-changing landscape of global e-commerce.

The Inception Story

Rathna’s first start-up, Runway2Street, enabled small brands to sell internationally through a marketplace. While scaling the marketplace to more than 300 brands from 100 countries, Rathna and her team noticed two things.

Firstly, the bigger brands that did not fit Runway2Street’s marketplace wanted to leverage its logistics technology and had a greater need for global trade compliance and supply chain optimization technology. Secondly, they tried every solution available in the market but could only solve a small part of the problem. This led them to develop their own solution.

Rathna understood these learnings, combined with the macro social and commercial trends, would lead to a much more connected world where brands would need to reach their ideal consumers anywhere around the globe. This eventually led to the creation of FlavorCloud as a headless global logistics service that any brand, anywhere in the world, could plug into and offer their end customers a seamless international shipping experience.

Making Shipping and Returns Easy and Affordable

FlavorCloud helps its clients by making international shipping and returns easy, affordable, and friction-free for mid-size to enterprise DTC brands and 3PLs worldwide, optimizing their supply chain needs globally as they scale. The platform offers dynamic pricing and dynamic routing and leverages data-rich, AI-optimized engines to provide best shipping and customs services at the most affordable price via FlavorCloud’s Global Network-the world’s largest cross-border network of premium parcel and freight carriers and customs clearance services. FlavorCloud automates a profoundly fragmented, antiquated, and opaque international cross-border trade and logistics industry, which is a nightmare for brands and consumers to navigate.

• Checkout Conversion Optimization Engine: The FlavorCloud app and API seamlessly plug into native shopping carts and platforms to create an entirely friction-free, Amazon-like checkout experience for international consumers. The FlavorCloud Global Network is the world’s largest cross-border network with over 300 global, regional, and local carriers. Its innovative algorithm dynamically optimizes the best shipping option for every service level. FlavorCloud also automates product classification and guarantees with 99% accuracy a complete landed cost based on the order contents. As a result, FlavorCloud customers see an average 100%+ YoY increase in sales.
• Warehouse/WMS Integration: Under Rathna’s leadership, FlavorCloud offers a complete headless cross-border service with simple APIs that plug into existing warehouses/WMS/TMS. This helps enable end-to-end automation, from pickup at the warehouse to seamless delivery at the consumer’s front door. The organization automates export and import clearance through its customs clearance network. It provides paperwork and compliance automation in every country, from first-mile to global and last-mile optimization. This service also includes local VAT and tax handling for merchants in destination countries.
• Returns and Reverse Logistics: FlavorCloud is the only platform that offers true reverse logistics, which enables the consumer to generate a return merchandise request, receive a label with all the required paperwork electronically and request a carrier pick up the parcel from their doorstep. It does not wait for consolidation, and the product returns to its origin country with the same delivery timeline and tracking as the original shipment.

A Different Company

Rathna says, “The cross-border e-commerce competitive landscape is still greenfield today. FlavorCloud has a significant first-mover advantage as a turn-key, modern cross-border e-commerce enablement tech stack much farther ahead than any competition. The position is hard-earned, having been honed and optimized over 8+ years, including four years as a marketplace.” Currently, all players have a market share of <1%, primarily occupied by incumbents and skew towards rigid technologies and barriers for trade that existed a decade ago – like payment, currency conversion, fraud protection, and localization of checkout.

FlavorCloud was founded to enable global headless e-commerce experiences for international trade, agnostic to platforms and fostering a merit-based approach that partners with best in-service class carriers for optimal experiences for every route. The platform differs from all current players and competitors; the FlavorCloud vision offers insights, networks, and technology and is designed for digitally native brands across their B2C and B2B needs. The firm provides core logistics, reverse logistics, worldwide supply chain optimization, and trade/tariff automation. It’s a fresh, ground-up approach to solving today’s complex cross-border logistics challenges and tomorrow’s global trade compliance challenges.

The firm offers brands instant access to the largest cross-border network of national, regional, and global carriers, third-party agents, and providers. FlavorCloud has custom integration, technical, business, and operational optimizations with every carrier that helps it offer a streamlined end-consumer experience for every country. It provides access to exclusive volume-based discounted shipping rates, full tracking, and multiple terms of trade, including a first-of-its-kind guaranteed DDP (delivery duties paid) service worldwide that is 99% accurate. FlavorCloud automates decades-old, manual, fragmented, outdated, error-prone trade, tariff, and customs networks for shipping and returns.

Present Market Trends

Rathna believes that international customers’ expectations merge with domestic customers, expecting fast, inexpensive shipping and seamless purchase and return experiences in an increasingly connected world.

She says, “We will see continued supply chain challenges, with labor shortages, war, pandemics, and energy crises – forcing the old-school logistics industry and infrastructure to modernize, innovate and catch up to e-commerce. Governments and regulatory aspects of the trade are going to shift dramatically around the world. Every government wants a piece of the e-commerce pie as more and more dollars are moving online. Greater regulatory and trade complexities will become very fluid, and FlavorCloud is uniquely positioned to handle this effectively. We’ve seen the tip of this iceberg with Brexit and EU VAT changes – a precursor to what will happen in the next five years.”

Eyeing the Future

For the next three to five years, FlavorCloud’s vision is based on three themes, which will continue evolving.

• Prime for International: Offering everything a customer expects from a domestic purchase experience – fast, low-cost, end-to-end tracking, seamless customs handling, and easy returns. These are enormous challenges in international shipping, and FlavorCloud aims to deliver this experience and hone it for every country worldwide.
• One-Stop Shop: The platform’s mission is to be the One-Stop Shop for brands, enabling them to go global across all of their international supply chain optimization needs.
• Headless Global Logistics: It also intends to be the horizontal services layer that can power e-commerce tech stacks for cross-border enablement worldwide.

“FlavorCloud came from a lightbulb moment when my co-founder and I realized the shipping problems our initial startup was solving for could empower and benefit the whole global e-commerce ecosystem!”