i.
Forward liquidity
When capital will be tight, by day. When it will release, by counterparty. Not what happened last quarter — what is coming next week.
Decision intelligence for physical commodity trading
A decision system for physical commodity operators.
Chowa shows where capital is trapped by timing mismatches between contracts, settlements, counterparties, and banks — and what those mismatches cost. Built for operators in physical fuel and commodity trading.
01 — The problem
Profitable operations. Trapped capital.
In physical fuel and commodity trading, capital is rarely lost. It is held.
Timing mismatches between contracts and settlements, fragmented systems across desks and banks, and limited forward visibility leave working capital tied up unnecessarily. Operators carry buffers they do not need, draw credit they could avoid, and run less parallel exposure than their balance sheet would allow.
The cost is not visible on a P&L. It shows up as smaller positions, more expensive financing, and decisions made under uncertainty that should have been made with foresight.
02 — What Chowa shows you
Decisions, not dashboards.
Every view answers one question: act now, wait, reduce buffer, reallocate, or do nothing with confidence. We do not build BI tools.
ii.
Capital tie-up by counterparty
Where capital is held: against which contracts, which settlement dates, which banks. Single view, reconciled to your reality.
iii.
Settlement timing exposure
Which contracts are running early, late, or off baseline. Which mismatches are avoidable. Which are structural.
iv.
Decision deltas
Change versus yesterday. Change versus expected. Change versus baseline. Absolute numbers without context are noise.
03 — How we work
One operator at a time. Ninety days. Paid.
We work with one operator at a time on a paid 90-day pilot. We build the system around your data, your contracts, your settlement reality — not a generic platform configured to your edges.
The deliverable is a working decision system reconciled against your numbers, plus a written readout with quantified findings on where capital is trapped and what it costs.
Under the hood, we apply modern AI and decision intelligence techniques to the same problem treasury teams have been solving in spreadsheets: where is capital, when does it move, and what does the timing cost. Better tools, same question.
We do not build reporting software. We do not build BI. We do not build dashboards. We build a decision compressor for capital under uncertainty — and if it does not change a real decision about capital, it does not ship.
Weeks 1–2
Foundations
Domain model. Exposure and settlement ledger. Reconciled to your reality before anything else.
Weeks 3–4
Visibility
Live exposure by counterparty. Settlement timelines. First timing alerts.
Weeks 5–6
Foresight
Forward liquidity views. Settlement bottlenecks. Avoidable prefunding identified.
Weeks 7–8
Decisions
Capital tie-up views. Scenario logic. First changed decisions on the desk.
Weeks 9–12
Hardening & readout
Edge cases. Performance. Quantified findings. Continue, extend, or stop cleanly.
04 — Who we are
Operators of consequence.
Chowa is built by Hartej Singh Sawhney and Andrew Zubko, who previously built Hosho and Zokyo — security infrastructure that has secured over $100B in digital assets across institutional custody, exchanges, and trading infrastructure.
We are operators and engineers applying the same standard of correctness to a different problem: capital trapped by timing in physical commodity trading. We come to this domain as outsiders working alongside design partners who hold the trader's seat. We are explicit about what we know and what we are learning.
Correctness beats speed. Boring work beats clever abstractions. The ledger is the product. If the ledger is wrong, trust is lost. We hold ourselves to that standard.
05 — For banks & institutional partners
Built to extend trade finance, not replace it.
Banks active in physical commodity trade finance are increasingly asked by their clients for decision tools that complement L/C, revolving credit, and structured trade products. Chowa is built to sit alongside those products, not compete with them.
We work with institutions on three structures: white-label resale to commodity trading clients, integration with existing trade finance infrastructure, and structured referral arrangements with clearly defined economics.
For institutions evaluating a partnership, we offer a separate working session focused on partnership economics, integration architecture, and client fit.
Partnership inquiries
Trade finance, treasury services, transaction banking, structured finance.
A separate path for institutions. Different conversation, different economics, different timeline.
Discuss partnership →06 — Get in touch
Three ways to reach us.
We work with a small number of operators and partners at a time. Tell us which conversation you want to have.