French scaleup Saqara is a digital construction and infrastructure bid management platform. In a recent development, the digital procurement platform just raised $10.6 million (nearly £7.6 million) in the largest French Series A Contech fundraising round.
Plans to expand into UK and beyond
The investment round was led by Europe’s largest proptech VC, A/O proptech along with participation from Activum SG, Caisse des Dépôts et Consignation, Concrete VC and Leigh Jasper. Besides the investment, Saqara has rebranded from its previous name AOS aka Appels d’Offres Simplifiés, which translates to Simplified Invitations to Tender.
Saqara is derived from Saqqarah, an Egyptian temple and vestige that is also an emblematic construction of the 3rd millennium. It honours the world’s greatest builders and at the same time represents timelessness. It expresses the Saqara’s desire to act for the common good and to leave a positive mark on the world.
Saqara will use the investment to accelerate its international expansion into Germany, Netherlands, UK and southern Europe and broaden its product suite and platform. It plans for a new Tunisian strategic hub to accelerate its MENA footprint.
As the UK remains a major player in the global construction industry and Saqara’s expansion will help digitise and simplify the procurement process, which should aid in driving efficiencies and transparency in the UK construction sector.
Alexandre Brochot, president of Saqara said: “We are delighted to welcome new partners and to work towards building tomorrow’s world together. This financing round will be indispensable to our goal to continuously innovate and develop our products and to offer our current and future clients an unrivalled quality of service and user experience that will fully meet their expectations. We will also be able to accelerate our international growth by expanding to 4 countries annually.”
Othmane Zrikem, chief data officer of A/O PropTech said: “We are extremely proud to lead Saqara’s Series A as it expands into the UK, Germany and North Africa. We have been impressed by Saqara’s core product which has processed over €18 billion of construction and infrastructure tenders since 2018. Saqara is the leading European ConTech platform for bid management process and we are excited about the new products currently under development which will help further revolutionise the construction industry going forward.”
Gabbi Cahane, partner at Activum SG said: “From the outset it was clear that Alexandre and Thomas had the perfect combination of domain expertise, technical savvy and outrageous ambition to build something genuinely transformative for the construction industry. In a short space of time, they’ve built Saqara into an indispensable tool that streamlines, standardises and supercharges the entire tendering process for everyone involved.”
Digitises big management
In the French construction market, Saqara has over 4,500 projects launched on its platform since 2018, thereby totalling to over €18 billion of construction and infrastructure works. It has around 120 employees who support over 500 clients, 50,000 users and over 25,000 referenced contractors. The company plays a major role in digitising bid management, which minimises admin, reduces costs, and drives efficiencies and transparency across procurement.
By digitising efficiencies across the bid management process, the company reduces reliance on paper and spreadsheets and creates a platform, which brings the entire procurement process into an easy-to-use centralised software.
Environmental concerns are increasingly playing into decision-making within the real estate industry and a single centralised platform will enhance visibility over the entire supply chain and allow developers to track material sourcing and their carbon footprint.
The post French construction tech platform Saqara raises £7.6M to expand in UK appeared first on UKTN (UK Tech News).
