GoCement, a B2B marketplace for Indonesia’s construction and real estate industry, has received seed financing from Arise, a joint venture between MDI Ventures and Finch Capital.
Other participants in the round are MDI Ventures, Beenext, and Ideosource.
GoCement will use the new funding to accelerate product development while also growing by leveraging Arise’s network of construction companies within Indonesia state-owned enterprise backgrounds.
Djonny Suwanto and Asanga Abhayawardhana started GoCement in 2020. The duo is experienced in the construction industry and comes from a manufacturing and distribution background.
Indonesia’s construction industry faces several challenges: high fragmentation, poor communication, and data non-transparency. GoCement says it provides an innovative solution to address these challenges.
Also Read: Finch Capital-MDI Ventures JV ‘Arise’ hits first close of US$40M fund, to back 25 ASEAN startups
The company digitises the construction industry by creating a marketplace that utilises its decentralised building material distribution through cloud manufacturing. It is done by onboarding manufacturers, distributors, contractors, and other individual consumers into one platform.
During the pandemic, GoCement claims to have grown 16 per cent.
CEO and founder Suwanto said: “Construction is a massive industry, a complex ecosystem of project owners, developers, architects, general contractors, subcontractors down to mason (mandor / tukang) and more. I may call this industry the last dinosaur, which is ripe for technology disruption.”
He added that he had observed several significant problems in the construction industry for long years. They are mainly driven by inefficient materials procurement and transporting low-value bulky items.
“The problem is real. Contractors should be able to save time and hassle to generate productivity. GoCement is here to revolutionise the industry by bringing transparency and efficient building material procurement and equipment hires through its innovation & technology,” he added.
Aldi Adrian Hartanto, Partner of Arise, said: “Indonesia’s construction industry is dominated by several big players, similar to that of India, allowing players such as Infra.Market to establish a network that helps smaller manufacturers grow their business and compete with more established companies. Likewise, GoCement shares the same vision to alleviate the over-capacity in this industry through digitalisation and empowerment of all relevant stakeholders in Indonesia.”
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Image Credit: GoCement
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