The challenge
A Mumbai customs clearance broker handling 1,400 monthly Bills of Entry across JNPT, Nhava Sheva and Mumbai air cargo was filing every BoE manually on ICEGATE — junior staff spent 50 minutes per BoE looking up HSN classifications, validating CHA codes and checking DGFT licence numbers. Importer clients chased status hourly. Three EPCG and one Advance Authorisation licence had quietly lapsed in the last year, costing one client Rs 11 lakh in retrospective duty.
How we deployed
- Built a BoE-prep agent that ingested commercial invoice, packing list, BL and shipping bill, then drafted the ICEGATE form for staff approval.
- Trained an HSN classification model on 18 months of accepted BoEs — surfaced top-3 HSN with reasoning per line item.
- Wired DGFT licence master into a tracking dashboard with T-90, T-30, T-7 expiry alerts to importer client WhatsApp.
- Pushed BoE-status updates to client WhatsApp at every customs milestone — assessed, examined, OOC, gate-out.
- Routed exceptions on assessment query, shortage or rejection to the senior CHA with full document context, not raw mailers.
What changed
- Per-BoE filing time fell 71% — staff handle 14 BoEs daily versus 5 previously.
- HSN classification accepted on first suggestion in 91% of line items, validated against accepted-by-customs ground truth.
- Zero DGFT licence lapses across 9 months and 240 importer clients.
- Client status enquiry calls to the office dropped 79% with WhatsApp milestone updates.
- Broker took on 60 net-new importer clients without adding CHA headcount.
"My team used to spend half their day in HSN lookups and the other half on the phone with clients. Now they spend it on the actual queries that need a human."
— Managing Partner · Customs Broker