Bengaluru-based construction site operations and analytics platform QwikSpec, which is operated by Xlsys Technologies Pvt. Ltd, has raised $540,000 (Rs 3.5 crore) in a pre-Series A round led by Brigade Innovations LLP.
The funding round also saw the participation of marquee investors such as former Infosys director TV Mohandas Pai, Asset Builders director Suhail Rahman, Bobby Reddy of Indus Group, and UAE based private investor M George Oommen.
Ajith Alexander, co-founder and managing director, QwikSpec, told VCCircle that the company will use the capital to ramp up its technology infrastructure, besides significantly adding to its business development and customer acquisition initiatives.
QwikSpec is also planning to foray into international markets such as West Asia and South East Asia.
The startup offers end-to-end jobsite management and analytics services for the real estate industry to help developers reduce complexities in the construction of large projects through automating monitoring and supervising processes.
It was one of the five startups incubated in the first batch of Brigade Group’s Real Estate Accelerator Program (REAP).
QwikSpec was founded by Alexander and Roby Kurien in January 2015. While Alexander had stints in Cisco Systems and Limitless LLC, Kurien was associated with Motorola, Kyocera Wireless and Sirf Technologies.
The company had started off as a solutions provider to automate manual inspections for oil rigs, but tweaked its business model to focus on construction sites in 2016.
According to Alexander, the decision to change its business focus, helped the startup get selected to the REAP programme and further enhanced its product line by expanding to multiple locations. Since then the company saw its revenue double month-on-month.
The startup had raised $300,000 in angel funding in January.
The software-as-a-service product is offered on a per-square-feet basis, per project, to real estate developers and is billed on a monthly basis throughout a project’s lifecycle.
QwikSpec currently handles over 120 projects from a host of builders, including Tata Housing, Mahindra Lifespaces, Brigade Group, Mantri Developers, Prestige Group, Omkar Developers, Vaswani Group, and Shapoorji Pallonji Real Estate.
The company claims to have captured over 10 million data points from its portfolio projects and plans to offer predictive analytics to builders on cascading project delays.
With the Real Estate and Regulation Act (RERA) promising to bring transparency, accountability and efficiency in the sector and imposing strict punishment for non-deliveries, solutions, such as QwikSpec, will assume greater importance, feels Alexander.
“Predictive analytics on project delays are going to be a very important tool for developers as it would give them more visibility into the progress of the various aspects of the projects so that they can act accordingly to stop delays and avoid regulatory penalties.â€
“QwikSpec brings in transparency and accountability across all stakeholders in the construction process, including contractors, sub-contractors and customers. We believe the platform will become an imperative for the real estate fraternity in the new regulatory environment,†said Nirupa Shankar, director, Brigade REAP.