Indonesia’s construction industry is large and growing quickly, but a lot of supply procurement is still done the old-fashioned way, through phone calls and text messages. Juragan Material wants to make things easier with a B2B marketplace for building materials from curated suppliers.
The company announced today it has raised $4 million in seed funding led by Go-Ventures, with participation from Susquehanna International Group (SIG).
The new capital will be used for hiring, increasing Juragan Materials’ market share and technological enhancements.
Founded in 2021, the company’s marketplace currently has more than 9,000 products and over 180 brands, including structural, architectural, mechanical and electrical products. It is meant for use by contractors and project owners, and helps them source materials more quickly.
Before launching Juragan Materials, Tito Putra, CEO and co-founder, was a managing director of a building contractor firm.
All the startup’s other founders also have experience working in the construction industry. Chief operating officer Graceila Putri was a product associate at Amazon and worked on growth for a building contractor firm. Chief marketing officer Ricky Fernando previously worked in marketing and relations as Mortindo, a mortar producer, and chief procurement officer Meichael Surja was an architect and contractor on residential products for more than 15 years.
Putra said it often took days for him to source a single item, including time spent checking with multiple vendors for pricing and availability.
He also dealt with deliveries that could not be tracked and arrived late and offline payment and invoicing processes that were long and frustrating. This resulted in high working capital costs and potential losses because of overstocks and over- or under-supply.
Juragan Materials was created to simplify the last leg of the supply chain for the construction industry.
“We recognized that construction is a huge market that is still very conventional and untapped by technology, resulting in a lot of inefficiencies happening in the industry,” Putra said.
Juragan Materials new capital will be used to improve its platform and launch more features, scale-up its customer and vendor acquisitions and enhance its supporting infrastructure, particularly financing and logistics, Putra added.
via https://www.aiupnow.com
Catherine Shu, Khareem Sudlow
