aldagrama Japanese startup that develops project management software for construction companies, has secured a new strategic backer to help it develop its presence in Asia and the Middle East.
Panasonic, the consumer electronics giant that also develops solar panels, air conditioning units, and many other products for its construction business and major buildingsis investing in Aldagram.
The amount of the investment was not disclosed, but Aldagram said it will use the funds to focus more on India, Thailand, the Philippines, Malaysia and other countries in the region. His new strategic investor may be adding a few others to that list: Panasonic’s construction business is particularly active in India, Turkey and Vietnam. It has been associated with Aldagram since 2022.
The investment comes in the wake of a larger round the startup raised in the summer of 2022, a $20 million Series A of MonotaRo and JAFCO. As with the previous Serie A, Aldagram does not reveal details of his assessment. It currently employs 60 people.
Aldagram’s flagship product is a cloud-based project management platform called KANNA, designed for professionals in the construction, real estate, and manufacturing industries who use it to get and record on-site data for projects, and share that data. data with other project partners. .
Aldagram’s goal is to put a new digital spin on what has traditionally been a very analog industry, with an aging workforce and heavy, and sometimes very old machinery, Aldagram CEO and co-founder Hikaru Nagahama said in an interview with TechCrunch.
But in reality, the construction industry has been a key focus for dozens of tech startups, tackling the construction toolshe materials that are used and the many layers of software that help design and execute those projects, with some very notable departures among them, such as Autodesk’s acquisition of YC-backed PlanGrid for $875 million (see here and here for more information on our coverage of startups in the space).
KANNA allows users to store all data digitally and share site photos, project view documents, job applications, site location, information, performance details and more, Nagahama said.
“They can use their smartphones or tablets to use KANNA and easily access the information they want,” Nagahama told TechCrunch.
On top of that, KANNA helps construction project managers stay connected to what’s happening on site. “If you’re a project manager, you can use the website to manage all projects as a list view or communicate with all project members for instructions,” Nagahama said.
More than 10,000 companies in more than 10 countries, including the UK, Spain, Kenya, Uganda, Dubai, India, Thailand, Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Australia, have been using KANNA since its initial product launch in 2020, the company said. In addition to Panasonic, other big industrial-level users include Mitsui Designtec, Nissan Trading and Tokyo Redesign, according to the company.
The global construction management software market is expected to reach $23.9 billion in 2031, up from $9.3 billion in 2021, due to a recent report.
In addition to a wide swath of startups, there are also a host of larger IT players around the world in the building technology sector, including Oracle’s Primavera, Procore Technologies and Asana, Nagahama noted.
Oracle recently acquired Aconex, a cloud-based software platform; and Texture, a cloud-based payment and contract management provider, to extend its Primavera construction management platform. Another company, Procore, went public in 2021 after raising $75 million at a valuation of $3 billion in 2018.
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