An interview with Harsh Sajnani (co-founder & CEO) and Guilherme Soares (co-founder & COO).
Tell us about your startup Kingpin.
Kingpin is a revenue engine for brands, distributors, and retailers to run their B2B transactions. Most teams still run these transactions across disconnected tools and events. They prospect in one place, like trade shows, qualify in another, message buyers manually, negotiate in WhatsApp, and then try to reconcile everything back into spreadsheets or ERPs. This means that your revenue process breaks at every point, and growth becomes slow and unpredictable.
We built Kingpin to solve that. Everything from finding the right buyers, reaching out to them, running the commercial workflow, and closing the transaction happens in one flow. No resets and no silos.
Today, teams use Kingpin to grow distribution, open new markets faster, and improve conversion rates. What used to take months of prospecting, research, and trial and error now takes a few seconds. You enter a new market, set your filters, and Kingpin shows you who the right buyers are, how to reach them, and how to turn those opportunities into revenue with much less friction.
That is how global distribution should work.
How did you meet & what inspired you to found Kingpin?
We came from opposite sides of the B2B Retail value chain, but lived the same problems.
Harsh grew up in Dubai in a multi-brand distribution family business. He saw firsthand how difficult it was to reach the right retailers, open new markets, and scale revenue when so much of B2B selling depended on manual work.
I grew up in a retail family business in Brazil, where I learned early that retailers lose money not because they cannot sell, but because they do not know what to buy, who to buy from, and how to make commercial decisions with visibility.
Different continents, different roles, exactly the same commercial pain. When we met in Dubai, it was clear that this was not a regional problem. It was structural.
The UAE became our home by logic. It sits at the intersection of global trade, emerging market complexity, and one of the fastest-growing innovation ecosystems in the world. Harsh was born and raised here. I moved in 2021. This city gave us the perspective that B2B commerce can be rebuilt from the ground up and built for the world.
How are you transforming the industry?
B2B commerce has been hard to modernize because everyone tried to digitize small pieces of the workflow. One company builds a CRM. Another builds outreach tools. Another builds a marketplace or procurement module. Each one solves a fragment but the actual revenue engine stays broken.
We are taking a different path. When the entire revenue cycle sits in one system, the way teams operate changes immediately. You stop guessing who your buyers are because the right buyers appear in seconds. You engage them through structured and automated workflows instead of manual chasing. And when the deal starts moving, both sides transact with clarity and visibility instead of scattered spreadsheets and WhatsApp threads.
What we see across our customers is consistent. More qualified pipeline. Faster conversion. Less time wasted on admin. Faster entry into new markets because they can identify and reach the right partners instantly. And they do not need to depend on headcount or trade shows to scale.
B2B commerce was never slow because of a lack of demand. It was slow because the infrastructure underneath it was outdated. We are rebuilding that infrastructure so revenue can move the way it should.
Do you have a case study you can share?
One example is Mizzen, a Seddiqi Holding distributor. Their wholesale process relied on paper catalogs, Excel sheets, and manual consolidation which is fine at small scale, but too slow when they added a new footwear brand just two weeks before a major buying event. With Kingpin, they converted their entire catalog into a shoppable online experience in under a day, letting retailers browse collections, apply terms, and place orders digitally.
Our partnership resulted in a 255% ROI, 200+ hours saved, 60% faster order processing, and every order closed on time.
That performance reflects a broader pattern: when teams use Kingpin consistently, they typically grow revenue from existing retailers by around 60%, unlock roughly 20% from net-new buyers, and cut operational time in the order cycle by over 85%. Once the workflow friction disappears, both sides of the transaction move faster and that’s what proves value over time.
What has been your greatest achievement as a company so far?
Our biggest achievement is proving that a revenue platform built in the Middle East can scale globally from day one. We are seeing teams in 75 countries and every continent of the world run their B2B commercial operations on Kingpin. Not adapted versions and not localised modules. The same platform.
On a practical level, the achievement we are most proud of is activation speed. Many companies scale revenue by adding more people. Kingpin allows them to scale by adding intelligence. A small team can suddenly reach thousands of buyers with precision, open new regions without depending on trade shows, and convert opportunities with much higher success.
That shift from manual sales to AI-supported revenue operations is what gives companies leverage.
You have recently raised $3.5 million in seed funding. How did you raise this investment?
We raised this round from investors within our own network, who deeply understand B2B, commerce, and automation. They know how inefficient the distribution chain is and how much revenue companies lose because they cannot find the right buyers or manage workflows efficiently. Most of them have faced these very same issues in their careers.
What convinced them was founder market fit, the global nature of the problem, and the clarity of the architecture we are building. Kingpin replaces the fragmented systems that run distribution today and turns the entire revenue cycle into one connected engine.
How do you plan to spend the investment to accelerate your growth?
We are focused on two priorities.
The first is AI. Revenue teams can only scale if the repetitive work is automated. AI is the only credible way to do that. We are deepening our agentic workflows so teams can automate more of the motions that take time today. Prospecting. Outreach. Follow-ups. Coordination. We want the system to do the heavy lifting so the team can focus on the conversation and the close.
The second is global expansion. Most of our inbound demand today comes from Europe, North America, and LATAM. These regions depend heavily on distribution, yet still run on slow and fragmented workflows. Kingpin helps companies enter new markets faster because the system instantly shows who the right buyers are and how to engage them. We are doubling down on regions where the pull already exists.
How has the Mubadala-backed Hub71 ecosystem helped you grow the business?
Hub71 is a great ecosystem to be part of. It’s a place where high-level introductions, ecosystem exposure, and operational support speed up everything a startup might need to accelerate faster and leverage the Abu Dhabi and UAE’s forward looking approach. Being part of a community that thinks globally accelerates how we build and how fast we can scale.
It is also the perfect base for a company like Kingpin. The UAE connects East and West, moves fast, and embraces innovation. That matters when you are building commercial infrastructure for the world.
What is your vision for Kingpin over the next decade?
We want Kingpin to become the default infrastructure of B2B retail. The system companies rely on to discover products, manage partners, and grow revenue across markets.
In the future, revenue teams will not run their operations manually. They will supervise AI agents that identify the right buyers, manage outreach, coordinate sales workflows, and support transactions intelligently. That shift will give companies real leverage because speed and precision will replace the slow and fragmented processes the industry has relied on for decades.
Our north star is simple. When a brand, distributor, or retailer thinks about global distribution, Kingpin should be the system they plug into. One platform. One system. One flow for how the world trades.
Where can readers find out more?
Visit kingpin.ai and book a demo to see the platform in action.
