Cyprus based construction startup raises $1.25 million

Cyprus-based PropTech startup buildbuild, which develops software for managing construction projects and increasing their marginality in the small and midsize (SMB) sector, announced this week that it has raised $1.25 million in investments from Luxembourg-based company Lvl Group SARL.

According to the announcement, the funds will be used to accelerate product development, marketing, and scaling efforts, while the A round is planned for the autumn of 2024.

buildbuild was founded in 2021 by Marko Mihić Jeftić. He had earlier worked on construction startups of a major European real estate developer as an in-house founder. The project’s Advisory Board includes David Basulto, CEO of ArchDaily.

The company said that it is working on a platform that enables SMB construction companies that engage in everything from apartment repairs and construction of single-family homes to general contracts in residential, commercial, and road construction to compete with major industry players.

In addition, the software helps to increase profits, providing online information about construction and budget in real-time, without the need to maintain a large back office.

The company said that its “clear advantage over its market competitors is the simplicity of its implementation” since all construction staff can master the platform quickly and easily, which is essential in the SMB segment.

The developers also stressed that in creating the platform, they were primarily focused on the main business process of their audience, meaning the execution of work at the construction site, while competitor companies are RFI-centred (request for information).

What is more, the company’s flagship product, a web app for project management, enables users to create cost sheets, and track work execution, payments, and cash flow gaps.

There is also a mobile app for contractors, which they can use to study the quality criteria and cost of work, issue invoices, and track payments.

The application is available in the ​​AppStore, Google Play Market, and Huawei AppGallery, while buildbuild specified that it uses a subscription model.

Marko Mihić Jeftić, CEO of buildbuild, said that construction is one of this century’s main themes.

He noted that the UN forecasts that by the end of the century, the world’s population will reach 11-12 billion, noting that “statistics tells us that the richer the country, the more residential square meters per person it has”.

In this framework, he said that over the next one hundred years, we will have to build as much as we’ve done throughout our history. “It is a great challenge,” he stressed.

“When I studied architecture at the university, I was inspired by the tech entrepreneurs who were changing the world. I began to think about things I could do to make the process of home construction better. In the process of studying construction, I saw one of the sector’s main problems on full display: we are talking about organizing actual work at the construction site. It hasn’t changed much since the Egyptians built their pyramids and remains ineffective,” Jeftić said.

“I decided to change this situation by giving each participant in the construction process a convenient instrument with equitable access to information so that everyone knows clearly what must be done. Even as we were testing buildbuild on the first clients, we saw the quality of construction grow fivefold, and, most importantly for me, the workers’ wages had also grown,” he added.

Today, the company is testing its product on the markets of Great Britain, Cyprus, UAE, India, Malaysia, Serbia, and South Africa.

The product was tested privately by 15 clients over a period of two years. The app is now sold openly, and buildbuild expects at least 100 active subscribers by year-end. The company estimates the total market volume for its platform at $5.6 bln.

Ivan Kozheurov, Chief R&D Officer at Cyprus-based bbf noted that “no solution from the competitors provides buildbuild’s functionality when it comes to issuing tasks and automating the document flow”.

“We began to transition to the electronic document flow with our subcontractors, a process that previously seemed impossible due to the complexity and high cost of alternative solutions,” he added.

Kozheurov elaborated further by saying that “this enables us to save a lot of time on communications and payment processes”.

“We also like the company’s flexibility in developing solutions to fit our work and market conditions and their user-friendly user experience and user interface,” he concluded.