Construction Management App Powerplay Raises $5.2 Mn Led By Accel Partners And Surge

Construction management app Powerplay today announced $5.2 Mn 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 part of Surge’s fifth cohort of 23 companies that have developed new digital solutions to help companies and individuals work.

Founded in 2019 by Shubham Goyal and Lesh Dixit, Powerplay is a free mobile app that connects multiple stakeholders involved in construction, enabling them to communicate and collaborate. 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.

Since its launch in October 2020, the company claims that the app is currently used by over 35,000 contractors across 800 Indian cities. Additionally, over 5000 projects have been managed on the app.

“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 Lesh Dixit, founder and CEO, Powerplay.

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. Above that, 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.

India’s construction industry is expected to become the third largest globally by 2025 and grow by 7.1% each year. Several startups and ventures have begun to emerge in this industry. For instance, construction materials marketplace Infra.market recently entered the unicorn club, after raising $100 Mn in Series C funding round led by Tiger Global. Other companies in the sector include FalconBrick, Moglix, IndustryBuying, OfBusiness, and Power2SME.