The funding is led by Sequoia Capital India’s Surge and Accel Partners
The startup aims to digitise India’s massive construction industry, where the sector is expected to become the third-largest globally by 2025 and grow by 7.1% each year.
The app has grown swiftly since its launch in October 2020 and is currently used by over 35,000 contractors across 800 Indian cities.
Over 5000+ projects have been managed on the app, with more than 200 hours reportedly saved each week by contractors.
Bengaluru, NFAPost: Construction management app Powerplay announced $5.2 million in funding led by Accel Partners and Surge, a rapid scale-up program by Sequoia Capital India for startups in India and Southeast Asia. India Quotient and Snapdeal founders also participated in the round.
Powerplay is a free mobile app that connects multiple stakeholders involved in construction, enabling them to communicate and collaborate more efficiently. Project managers, workers and partners can use this one-stop platform to help them track their progress, deliverables and payments, as well as streamline the often complex and multi-stakeholder project management process.
The construction sector in India is the country’s second-largest contributor to GDP, and currently employs 16% of the working population. Yet, very few tech solutions have emerged to help digitise the construction process—a need that has been accelerated by the pandemic.
The industry is dominated by small and medium contractors, who still rely on pen, paper and whatsapp to track progress and struggle to maintain visibility over the work of so many stakeholders involved. As a result, construction projects often face very costly delays when initial time and budget estimates go wrong.
Powerplay Founder and CEO Iesh Dixit said Powerplay comes at a time when the construction industry in India is ripe for digital disruption.
“By empowering construction workers & contractors with technology, we are driving the growth of crucial infrastructure required for economic and social progress in the country. We’re committed to keep learning from our users, and will be dedicating the new funding into building a world class team & product improvements to digitise the industry one step at a time,” said Iesh Dixit.
With the Powerplay app, contractors can not only chart their project completion progress, but use it to track employee attendance, budgeting and invoicing, as well as issues and material management. Powerplay is an operating system for all construction stakeholders (builders, contractors and subcontractors) to build projects of all sizes, from tallest buildings to longest roads.
The company was founded in Bangalore in December 2019 by Iesh Dixit and Shubham Goyal, who both graduated from IIT Roorkee. Iesh previously built a B2B online marketplace that was used by 250 manufacturers and over 10,000 retailers, while Shubham worked at Samsung, where he was part of the team that designed Samsung’s top rated S10 camera software.
Powerplay is part of Surge’s fifth cohort of 23 companies that have developed new digital solutions to help companies and individuals work, live and learn better in a rapidly evolving Southeast Asian landscape.
About Powerplay
Founded in 2019 and headquartered in Bangalore, Powerplay is a construction management app that simplifies communication and cross-team collaboration for India’s construction industry. The app is available for both Android and iOS devices.
About Surge
Surge is Sequoia Capital India’s rapid scale-up program for startups in India and Southeast Asia. Surge combines $1 million to $2 million of seed capital with company-building workshops, a global curriculum and support from a community of exceptional mentors and founders.
The program’s goal is to supercharge early-stage startups and give founders an unfair advantage, right out of the gate. For more information on Surge, visit www.surgeahead.com.
