Kingdom is a pet health company developing Superculture ingredients, a class of postbiotics designed to address unmet pet health needs. Its first two ingredients, Superculture Pet Oral and Superculture Pet Immune, were developed specifically for pets and are supported by a growing body of clinical research. Pulse 2.0 interviewed Kingdom Co-Founder and CEO Kendall Dabaghi to learn more.
Kendall Dabaghi’s Background
When asked about his background, Dabaghi shared:
I’m the co-founder and CEO of Kingdom, founded in 2019 after several years of microbiome research at Columbia, where I built novel high-throughput systems to isolate and characterize human gut microbes and developed new computational approaches to classify them.
Before Kingdom, I co-founded A Plus, a media company acquired by Chicken Soup for the Soul, and Gridtech, a web security platform acquired by Spirent Communications. I hold a BA from Duke University and was a Fulbright Scholar.
My co-founder, Ravi Sheth, is the Chief Science Officer at Kingdom. Ravi received his PhD as an NSF and Hertz fellow at Columbia University, and his work on genomics tools to understand the ecology of microbiomes has been published in top scientific journals, including Science and Nature Biotechnology. Ravi also spent time at the Gates Foundation advancing new microbiome-directed interventions to combat malnutrition.
How Kingdom Started
When asked how the idea for the company came together, Dabaghi explained:
Ravi and I met while collaborating on microbiome research at Columbia University in 2017. For many years, I had struggled with gut and immune health that traditional medical approaches weren’t healing. When I finally tried fermented foods, I was able to reverse many of those symptoms, which sparked my fascination with the power of microbes.
After my prior tech startup was acquired in 2016, I headed to Columbia to research how microbes could be used to address chronic health needs.
Ravi, then a PhD candidate at Columbia, was passionate about uncovering and harnessing the full potential of microbes. He built foundational tools for engineering complex microbial ecosystems and published his research in many top scientific journals.
A summer fellowship at the Gates Foundation focused on malnutrition and the microbiome opened his eyes to the real-world applications of microbes and the opportunity to translate advanced research into effective health solutions.
We transitioned our work from academia to business in 2019, co-founding Kingdom with the shared mission of making a quantifiable impact on unmet health needs using natural microbes.
Seeing The Science Reach Pet Parents
When asked about his favorite memory working for the company so far, Dabaghi recalled:
One of our favorite memories is seeing the first pet parent feedback come in after a brand launched its first product powered by Superculture Pet Oral.
Early reviews described fresher breath within a week or two, visibly healthier gums, and (our personal favorite) more close-up time with their dogs. We’d watched the clinical data come together over months, but seeing pet parents describe the same outcomes in their own words was the moment it felt real.
The science we had built was actually making dogs, and the people who love them, healthier and happier!
Core Products And Features
When asked about Kingdom’s core products and features, Dabaghi detailed:
At Kingdom, we’ve pioneered Superculture ingredients: an entirely new class of clinically validated postbiotics that target the root causes of unmet pet health needs.
Our first two ingredients, Superculture Pet Oral and Superculture Pet Immune, are supported by 12 clinical studies (9 completed, 3 in progress) that demonstrate unparalleled efficacy compared to other ingredients on the market. Both were created from the ground up for pets and their unique biology, unlike most market alternatives, which have been repurposed from human or livestock applications.
Superculture Pet Oral is the market’s most clinically validated oral health postbiotic. It directly targets the microbes that drive bad breath, plaque, and poor oral health in dogs, delivering industry-leading results in just 7–14 days.
Superculture Pet Immune is the only postbiotic clinically validated to address pet parents’ top health concerns: occasional itching, skin and coat quality, stool quality, and gut microbiome diversity, with results beginning at just 14–28 days. It’s 2.5x more effective at reducing itching than other clinically studied biotics for pets.
Both ingredients are shelf-stable and derived from natural, non-GMO microbial strains. They’re verified to withstand a wide range of heat, pressure, moisture, and other common manufacturing conditions, and are compatible with virtually any food or supplement format.
They’re produced entirely in the USA in GMP-certified facilities through a proven supply chain built to seamlessly meet our partners’ demand.
Competing With Larger Ingredient Companies
When asked about challenges in the sector and how Kingdom has addressed them, Dabaghi noted:
As a startup going up against much larger ingredient companies, we’ve had to clear a higher bar on every dimension that matters to brands: clinical substantiation, regulatory rigor, supply reliability, and consistency at scale, often with a fraction of the resources.
Pet brands are rightly cautious about betting their flagship products on a young company, so we set out to make the decision easy for them by outperforming incumbents on the things they care about most.
That’s where we’ve been thrilled by what a lean, focused team can do. We’ve now completed 9 double-blinded, placebo-controlled, randomized studies in under three years, with 3 more in progress and 5 peer-reviewed publications out.
Our ingredients deliver results in days or weeks (outperforming competitive solutions by meaningful amounts), and we’ve de-risked scaled ingredient runs with strong run-to-run consistency.
Setting a higher standard for ourselves than the category expected has become one of our most durable competitive advantages.
Technology And R&D Evolution
When asked how Kingdom’s technology has evolved since launching, Dabaghi explained:
Since founding Kingdom in 2019, we’ve built an integrated R&D platform that combines three differentiated technologies under one roof: one of the world’s largest biobanks of natural microbes (25,000+ diverse isolates); deep analytical capabilities spanning metagenomics, metabolomics, and microscopy; and a clinical validation program with leading research partners.
That platform has produced two breakthrough ingredients in the last three years.
Superculture Pet Oral came first, built on the insight that the oral microbiome, and specifically its unwanted microbes, lies at the root of poor pet oral health.
We followed it with Superculture Pet Immune, which delivers beneficial indole compounds to influence the microbiome-immune axis and address the skin, gut, and immune concerns that pet parents worry about most.
The level of precision and rigor we bring to development is a big part of what sets the platform apart. For Superculture Pet Immune, for example, we developed custom analytical chemistry methods to quantify beneficial metabolites with high accuracy across screening, fermentation, and scale-up.
We built a plate-based fermentation model that let us run hundreds of experiments in parallel rather than being limited to a handful of large bioreactor runs, ultimately making more than 20,000 measurements on key postbiotic compounds across thousands of experiments.
Our novel high-throughput assays let us screen for combinations with exceptional functionalities against specific pet health needs. Every optimization decision was grounded in data, and that rigor is what allowed us to identify the microbial strain that became the foundation of the ingredient and to translate it to reliable production at commercial scale.
Major Company Milestones
When asked about some of Kingdom’s most significant milestones, Dabaghi highlighted:
-
- Clinical evidence base. 9 successful clinical studies across our two Superculture ingredients, with 3 more in progress, a level of clinical substantiation that’s rare in the category. Every study is double-blinded, placebo-controlled, and randomized, with endpoints chosen to reflect real outcomes pet parents can observe.
- Peer-reviewed body of research. The first peer-reviewed studies on Superculture Pet Immune and Superculture Pet Oral have both been published in Animals. Two additional manuscripts on Superculture Pet Oral were recently published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Veterinary Dentistry, and one other on Superculture Pet Immune in the journal Pets.
- IP portfolio. 3 patents granted across 7 families, with additional applications pending.
- Commercial reach. Dozens of leading pet brands are incorporating our ingredients into their end products today, with dozens more launches planned.
- Cross-species validation. Completing our first clinical study in cats, validating Superculture Pet Immune’s efficacy beyond dogs.
- Research selected for presentation at leading veterinary forums (Veterinary Dental Forum 2025, American College of Veterinary Internal Medicine Forum 2026) and the preeminent industry events (Pet Food Forum-US, Pet Food Forum-Asia, National Animal Supplement Council).
- “Less than a year in market, our Superculture ingredients already power dozens of products from household pet brands. And 90% of our first-time customers are launching additional products with Superculture ingredients.”
Customer Success
When asked to share specific customer success stories, Dabaghi said:
Brands formulating with Superculture Pet Oral have seen strong market reception and customer reviews. Roughly one in three products powered by the ingredient have earned a #1 New Release badge on Amazon shortly after launch.
Pet parent feedback has been overwhelmingly positive: fresher breath within one to two weeks, visible improvements in gum and tooth appearance, lower vet bills, and more close-up time with their dogs.
An end product formulated with Superculture Pet Immune was awarded #2 best new dog product at Global Pet Expo 2026.
Pet parent feedback across products formulated with the ingredient has been overwhelmingly positive: less itching, firmer stools, softer coat, and reduction in paw licking.
Funding
When asked about funding and revenue metrics, Dabaghi shared:
We’ve raised $40M from leading investors, which we’ve used to build what we believe is the most capital-efficient clinically validated ingredient platform in pet health today.
Market Opportunity
When discussing the total addressable market Kingdom is pursuing, Dabaghi explained:
We’re pursuing the global pet biotics ingredients market, which was valued at about $878 million in 2025 and is projected to reach $1.23 billion by 2030 (MarketsandMarkets). Within that, the postbiotic segment is growing fastest at ~8.1% CAGR, mapping directly to where Superculture ingredients play.
Zooming out, the demand signals point to meaningful headroom beyond today’s biotics category: 41% of pet parents now consider functional nutrition essential, over two-thirds say they’re willing to spend on life-extending products, and functional natural cat food is already outpacing overall cat food growth despite the supplement category remaining ~75% dog-oriented.
As “microbiome” and “biotics” mature from buzzwords into performance categories, we see the addressable opportunity expanding well beyond the biotics ingredients TAM, into the broader functional pet nutrition and supplements market.
Competitive Differentiation
When asked what differentiates Kingdom from its competition, Dabaghi emphasized:
Most pet ingredients weren’t originally designed for pets at all; rather, they were developed for livestock or humans and later cross-sold into the pet market. They typically mask underlying health needs, address them only at a surface level, or carry negative side effects.
Kingdom takes a fundamentally different approach, and our differentiation shows up in four key ways:
- Ingredients built from the ground up for pets. Each Superculture ingredient is built for pets and their unique biology, targeting unmet health needs at the root in a deliberate, quantitatively validated manner. That enables three things for our partner brands: breakthrough marketing claims backed by industry-leading clinical results; quickly visible results, in days or weeks, on the health needs pet parents care most about; and superior product performance compared to products not formulated with Superculture ingredients.
- A clinical validation program that sets a new standard. Across 9 successful clinical studies (with 3 more in progress), every trial is double-blinded, placebo-controlled, and randomized. We measure endpoints pet parents can actually observe- less itching, shinier coats, firmer stools, fresher breath- and measure them with quantitative tools like wearable accelerometers alongside human perception assessments. We publish in peer-reviewed journals because transparency about methodology and outcomes is how we shift industry norms, not just marketing language.
- An integrated R&D platform. A biobank of 25,000+ diverse natural microbe isolates, deep analytical capabilities across metagenomics, metabolomics, and microscopy, and proven multi-ton monthly production with strong consistency across runs. A patent portfolio of 3 granted patents across 7 families with additional applications pending protects the innovation.
- An unusually lean, focused team. With just 20 people, 1 in 3 of whom is a PhD with technical expertise, we’re outpacing ingredient companies many multiples of our size on clinical substantiation, publication record, and speed to market. This is a reflection of how we work: first principles thinking, strong operating discipline, and a culture of resourcefulness and kindness.
Future Goals
When discussing Kingdom’s future goals, Dabaghi said:
Our mission is to make a quantifiable impact on unmet pet health needs using natural microbes.
Looking ahead, that means:
- Continuing to expand our clinical evidence base and peer-reviewed publication record.
- Bringing our ingredients to pet parents across the globe, building on our current footprint in the US.
- Expanding into additional natural microbe-based postbiotics for more unmet pet health needs.
Probiotics And Postbiotics
When invited to discuss another topic, Dabaghi concluded:
One topic worth underscoring is the difference between probiotics and postbiotics, because it gets to the heart of why Superculture ingredients can deliver the kind of clinical results they do.
Most pet parents have heard of probiotics, which are live microbes that a pet ingests but that have to survive digestion to produce benefits.
Postbiotics take a different approach. They deliver the active compounds and metabolites produced by beneficial microbes directly, without requiring the microbes themselves to stay alive.
That means postbiotics are more consistent, more stable across food and supplement formats, and more predictable in how much of the active compound reaches the site of action in the pet’s body.
For Superculture Pet Oral, that’s what lets us directly target the microbes driving bad breath and plaque in the mouth. For Superculture Pet Immune, it’s what lets us deliver beneficial indole compounds that influence the microbiome-immune axis and visibly reduce itching.
It’s also why postbiotics are the fastest-growing segment within the broader biotics category in pets, and why many researchers consider them the new standard for clinically backed functional ingredients in pet health.
