Cutting Through the Noise in Component Sourcing

Estimated reading time: 1 minute

Every engineer knows the pain of searching for parts—it’s often slow, frustrating, and outdated, more like flipping through a phone book than using modern technology. Despite decades of progress in electronics, component sourcing remains one of the industry’s most tedious and time-consuming tasks.

Kipo is a software platform that reimagines this process. It uses AI and modern search technology to help engineers quickly find, compare, and source the parts they need. Founded by entrepreneur Arjun Tambe, the company’s mission is to make sourcing faster, easier, and more intuitive by transforming a long-standing headache into a seamless, enjoyable experience.

“Our current way of searching for parts felt back then, and even more so now, like looking through the Yellow Pages,” Tambe says. “Kipo is the marriage of a longstanding, universal problem and a new, enabling technology that finally renders it solvable.”

The inspiration for Kipo came from Arjun’s background in robotics, where he was first drawn to electronics. “I thought there was something magical about seeing physical things move by themselves,” he says. Designing hardware and writing the software that powered it gave him a firsthand understanding of how critical, and often painful, component sourcing could be.

That insight only deepened as he moved through different workplaces and heard engineers repeat the same frustrations. He saw an opportunity to develop a smarter, technology-driven way to source parts that could scale with the growing demands of modern manufacturing.

To continue reading this article, which originally appeared in the December 2025 edition of SMT007 Magazine, click here.