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Kintsugi founders Barkin Doganay (left), Pujun Bhatnagar, (center), and Jeff Gibson (right).

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A 2018 Supreme Court rulingeliminated the requirementthat an e - DoC retail merchant ask a forcible location in a state in order for said Department of State to be capable to collect sales tax on purchases made by residents . While the decisiveness was a boon for states , it created a worry for e - DoC trafficker .

Kintsugiis await to offload and automate calculating and filing sales revenue enhancement for companies . The San Francisco - based company ’s AI technology colligate to a society ’s billing and requital organization and figures out in which state they are nonresistant to give sale tax . It then registers users in the correct states . From there , the system can automatically calculate and prorogue what a ship’s company owe in sales tax to keep companies in deference .

Kintsugi raised a $ 6 million Series A round before this year led by Link Ventures that valued it at a $ 40 million post valuation in April . The company has since reopened its Series A round , take on extra $ 4 million in capital letter led by Airwallex , and doubled its valuation to $ 80 million .

Pujun Bhatnagar , Kintsugi co - founding father and CEO , said that he got interested in the sales revenue enhancement blank space while exercise as a elderly car learning engineer at Meta in 2018 . Bhatnagar told TechCrunch that both his Father of the Church and grandfather worked in taxation their entire career . Bhatnagar find himself in 2018 wondering what he wanted to do with his life . It just so happened to be around the same meter as the Supreme Court opinion , which opened up a whole Modern market that was deserving explore , he said .

“ It ’s fundamentally an amalgamation of 52 different types of fiddling commonwealth , which have their own laws and jurisdictions when it arrive to local governments , ” Bhatnagar said . “ And 48 of these jurisdiction have sales - revenue enhancement - related jurisprudence . ”

To really understand the problem , Bhatnagar say he started doing sales tax for einsteinium - commercialism and SaaS companies by hand for a year and a half to really understand the infliction points before publish any codification . He made Kintsugi ’s first few employee reckon sales revenue enhancement by script , too .

From there they built a political program and algorithm to modernize and automate sales revenue enhancement compliance . Bhatnagar read that building the model in - house has made their result more precise than competitors that rely on big , all - cover language framework . He said that the troupe keeps humans in the loop to monitor for truth , too .

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The fellowship was officially launch in 2022 and launched its website in August 2023 . Bhatnagar said inward interest was contiguous , and Kintsugi has been able to get its client base to more than 1,100 users in the retiring year . It has garner $ 1 million in revenue .

Kintsugi is n’t unequaled in want to modernize the sales taxation process for companies . Competitors includeAnrok , which has raised more than $ 50 million in venture money , andCereTax , which has raise $ 19 million in venture Das Kapital , in addition to legion bequest company that outsource the process to folk in countries like India . This is the same case of work that Bhatnagar ’s category had knead on .

Bhatnagar thinks that part of the reason requirement has been so gamey for Kintsugi is its attack to landing customers . The company allows potential customers to sign up for gratis and try out out whether they like it . If they choose to proceed , they can pay $ 100 per tax filing or create a custom architectural plan . Bhatnagar added that some of their competitor bear down hefty fee just for onboarding to their platforms .

“ We are the only company in the space that has a ‘ get started ’ button , that has a ‘ we will do your sales tax analysis for destitute [ clitoris ] , ’ ” Bhatnagar said . “ And that ’s not going to be just done once . you may make a free story , and every seven minutes the report is extend to be updated for you . And that ’s a note value prop that we want to provide to founders for free , even if they adjudicate to not make up a single dime bag for Kintsugi . ”

Kintsugi plans to use its new capital to keep expanding its technical school and to help the company pitch up to exposit into Canada and Europe .

“ We are a bunch of nerds , ” Bhatnagar tell . “ We are not trying to sell any snake in the grass oil color . Connect your data , see the results . ”