French startup Granite builds an all-in-one software-as-a-service product aimed at small construction businesses. And it’s grown quite a bit since I first did the business as the company has tripled its revenue over the past six months.
That’s why the startup raised an €8 million Series A round ($8.7 million at today’s exchange rate), with its two main investors leading the round again – Point nine And Fundamental. In fact, Graneet tells me that this is Point Nine’s first leading investment in a Series A round. This is an interesting data point, as Point Nine has a good point State of service when it comes to B2B SaaS investments.
Axeleo Capital, Phiture, the philanthropic vehicle of RAISE Sherpas, and several business angels also invest in Graneet, including Rodolphe Ardant of Spendesk, Nicolas Dessaigne who co-founded Algolia, and JC Taunay-Bucalo at TravelPerk.
Graneet is a vertical SaaS, meaning the startup builds a product specifically designed to meet the needs of a particular industry. Due to the background of the founder, Graneet focuses on construction companies.
And that’s an interesting choice, because there’s a long tail of small construction companies that don’t necessarily have the right tools to track their projects, prepare quotes, manage team members, and engage with subcontractors. So Graneet is building a kind of mini-ERP for SMEs in the construction industry. Large construction companies are not switching to Graneet, but there is no point in using a full-fledged ERP if you only run a small company.
Since construction work usually takes several months to complete, it can be difficult to keep track of margins at any given time. Clients pay in several installments and construction companies gradually spend money. Having a co-pilot like Graneet can improve construction companies’ planning strategy.
“We have been iterating with our customers and prospects for the past 2 years to build a powerful, yet very easy to use solution. Graneet has now proven mature enough as a product to accelerate customer acquisition while continuing to better serve our customers with more capabilities within our product,” said co-founder and CEO Jean-Gabriel Niel in a statement.
In addition to acquiring more customers, there is a long road map for Graneet. Once the platform is actively used by a number of construction companies, Graneet will be able to offer additional services, such as financial products or deep integrations with third-party services. In other words, the startup has an opportunity for digitization and the industry can benefit from modern software tools.
Image Credits: Granite
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