What is Kinnek? Kinnek Review

Founded in 2012, Kinnek is a technology platform that provides online procurement services, aiming to improve transaction efficiency for bulk purchases by small and medium-sized enterprises.

About the Founder

Kinnek was incubated by San Francisco-based AnglePad in 2012. Its founder, Karthik Sridaran, graduated from the Wharton School of Business with a double degree in computer science and finance; the other founder, Rui Ma, graduated from Cornell University with a computer science background and is good at improving user experience.

About Kinnek

Kinnek is committed to connecting small and medium-sized enterprises with suppliers who provide the products they need and offer them affordable prices. Kinnek has brought a market catalog to these small businesses. Whenever small business owners need to make purchases, they can log in to the company's website to inquire about prices. The quotations of different merchants for all specifications of products are clear at a glance. Suppliers can also choose to register on the website and then upload their own product quotations for the owners to choose. More importantly, this is just a preliminary understanding. The two parties can even communicate and negotiate further on the Kinnek website.

Kinnek reviews all supplier requests and suppliers are required to pay a fixed monthly fee to trade on the platform.

Kinnek is a buyer-driven marketplace, rather than focusing on sellers. Kinnek has an algorithm to help determine which sellers are most likely to order goods and alert them. Suppliers then provide information about the items they have and the costs, and buyers can choose from them. It ignites liquidity and also means that customers get good prices.

Platform Model

Kinnek's model is not a simple information intermediary, but mainly serves buyers. When they place a demand order, the platform pushes it to the relevant suppliers, and then the suppliers provide product information and quotations, and the buyers finally choose. This service is free for buyers, and the platform will charge a certain commission from the supplier and promise to help it sell the goods. The platform also advocates de-intermediation and hopes to establish an evaluation mechanism for suppliers to help good suppliers attract traffic, which is similar to the basic idea of ​​domestic B2B platforms.

Development History

Kinnek was founded in 2012 and raised $3 million in seed funding after graduating from the AngelPad incubator.

-In 2013, Kinnek opened its first office on Madison Avenue in New York City; Kinnek's proprietary product classification system was born, which allows for easy comparison of custom products and quotes; 300 suppliers and 6,300 small businesses joined Kinnek.

-In 2014, 800 suppliers and 10,000 small businesses joined Kinnek; Kinnek completed a $10 million Series A financing led by Matrix Partners.

-In 2015, Kinnek processed more than $1 billion in bids in a year for the first time; Kinnek raised $20 million in Series B funding led by Thrive CAPItal.

-2016-2017: Launch of “Kinnek Pay” (a secure B2B payment engine); Launch of “Kinnek Re-order” toolkit; Kinnek was named one of the 2017 Red Herring 100 Most Innovative Companies in North America.

-In 2018, the “Kinnek Catalog” was launched; the “Kinnek VisiBILity” feature was released; Kinnek was named one of the top 100 best companies to work for in New York by Crain’s.