Sequoia Surge’s Brick&Bolt raises Series A round

Online construction marketplace Brick&Bolt, which provides end-to-end construction services and connects contractors and architects with people building homes, has secured Rs 16.5 crore in its Series A funding round from Foundamental GmBh. 

This is the second investment round for the company in 2020.

The Berlin-based venture capital firm is a leading global investor in mining and construction technology and it has now invested in Brick&Bolt in exchange for 1,164 Series A CCPS priced at Rs 1,41,218 each, shows regulatory filings. The round seems to be an ongoing one and other investors including Sequoia may participate.

A part of Sequoia’s accelerator program Surge’s second cohort, Brick&Bolt had raked in $1.5 million in Pre-Series A round in February. It counts Trifecta Capital’s Akash Goel, Livspace’s Anuj Srivastava, Indiqube’s Meghna Agarwal, and Piramal Group’s Navin Dhanuka as its early backers. 

Founded in 2018 by Jayesh Rajpurohit and Arpit Rajpurohit, Brick&Bolt’s construction services platform connects contractors and architects to customers and claims to offer transparent pricing structures. Importantly, it also penalizes service providers in case of delay in the execution of projects. The platform claims to deploy AI-based engines to track construction progress.

With Rs 50 lakh as the average transaction size, Brick&Bolt majorly focuses on the B2C market. According to its website, the company has 800 customers and has completed 260 projects in Bengaluru. It recently expanded into Mysore also.

Infra.Market, another startup in this segment, had raised $3.5 million in its seed funding round in August 2019. Unlike Brick&Bolt, the company caters to builders and construction companies only.

Over the past few years, several attempts were made by startups to introduce tech-led innovations in the construction space. However, none of them scaled to a decent level. Early entrants such as Buildzar and Rootefy had to go out of business despite raising funds. 

Experts believe that supplying materials to the construction sector is a deep pocket game with a long payment cycle, especially in the B2B segment. Brick&Bolt has been trying to crack the B2C segment and it would be exciting to see how it scales up in the coming times.