Construction mgt app Powerplay raises $5.2 mn from Accel, Surge and others

Construction management app Powerplay raised $5.2 million in a funding round led by Accel Partners and Surge, a rapid scale-up programme 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.

“Powerplay comes at a time when the construction industry in India is ripe for digital disruption. 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 Powerplay Founder and CEO Iesh Dixit.

The construction sector in India is the country’s second-largest contributor to GDP, and currently employs 16 per cent of the working population. Yet, very few tech solutions have emerged to help digitise the construction process—a need accelerated by the pandemic. Moreover, 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.

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.