CutStruct Technology, a platform that digitises construction process for efficiency has raised $600,000 in pre-seed funding led by Zedcrest Capital, DFS Labs, Lofty Inc and Kola Aina of Ventures Platform to build its premier product, LiveVend.
LiveVend is a construction procurement platform that allows buyers (real estate developers, contractors e.t.c.) to engage vetted vendors on a simple and transparent platform while enjoying other services such as transportation, goods-in-transit insurance and trade credit which is offered by Sterling Banks’ buy-now, pay-later product – Specta for Business.
According to two second-time founders, John Oamen and Tayo Odunsi, LiveVend which is the company’s flagship product has onboarded well over a hundred vendors and major construction materials manufacturers.
In a statement, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) CutStruct, John Oamen described the platform as very simple.
He said: “We connect construction vendors to buyers. All the complex work takes place in the background. The vendor vetting, sorting out the appropriate logistics, ensuring the goods are insured, guaranteeing fulfilment and securing financing – these are the complex things we do in the background, while our users engage with a simple platform”.
On his part, the Chief Strategy Officer, Tayo Odunsi explained that the platform is free to use for buyers and they can also access weekly pricing data of major building materials across major locations in the company’s beachhead market, Nigeria.
To create the LiveVend solution, CutStruct partnered with solution providers which includes Axa Mansard for insurance, Sterling Bank for construction materials financing, Apel Trustees for escrow service, VerifyMe for vendor verification and Greychapel Legal for all legal and deal structuring.
Speaking on why his company backed Cutstruct, the CEO, Zedcrest Capital, Dayo Amzat said the vision fits into the interest at Zedcrest, and is in line with a major market development initiative they are currently pursuing with an African-focused housing-DFI
“Over the last decade, Africa in general, has seen tremendous improvement in many sectors of the economy ranging from payments, e-Commerce, banking, telecomms etc. However, despite the biggest capital asset on the continent being real estate, every aspect of the real estate value chain from construction management to mortgages remain grossly underdeveloped, with very low net promoter scores. We therefore welcome the efforts of John and Tayo in helping organise the construction marketplace, bringing much needed transparency and improvements to construction processes,” he said.
On the other hand, a partner at DFS Lab, Stephen Deng explained that they invested in John, Tayo and the Cutstruct team because of their belief in the untapped potential within the construction vertical in Nigeria and across Africa.
Speaking further , he said: “We believe tech-enhanced, specialised B2B platforms like LiveVend have a chance to vastly improve buyer and seller experiences in otherwise traditional industries and unlock massive opportunity to digitise large value streams in the process. The team’s expertise within industry and their vision to offer highly relevant services backed by their own on-the-ground experiences have been deeply impressive.”
SOURCE: THISDAY
