By Cara Waters
Construction technology startup Matrak has banked $5.85 million in fresh funding from cloud software firm Aconex co-founder Leigh Jasper and venture capital fund Rampersand.
The series A round values the startup at $30 million and follows the listing of construction vendor management software company Felix on the ASX last week.
"I think construction technology is a huge opportunity," Mr Jasper said. "When we started Aconex there were very few companies doing construction technology."
Matrak co-founders Brett and Shane HodgkinsCredit: Jason South
Mr Jasper and his co-founder Rob Phillpot sold Aconex to Oracle in 2017 for $1.6 billion and Mr Jasper said it was “no secret” the pair had not been looking to sell at the time. He said there was still a lot of potential for growth in the construction technology sector.
Mr Jasper said he was extremely bullish on Matrak’s prospects and while the number of construction technology startups in Australia was growing rapidly there was plenty of room for the new players in the market.
“With technology more broadly, the opportunities keep on expanding. You couldn’t have built Matrak 10 years ago,” he said. “As technology evolves and customers become more adept at using it, the opportunities arise.“
Matrak is a global construction tracking network that provides end to end supply chain information for construction companies.
The startup was founded in Melbourne in 2017 by Shane Hodgkins, 35, and Brett Hodgkins, 28, after the brothers found the lack of information about when supplies were due to arrive at their dad’s construction company was causing “mayhem”. They set about building a solution.
“It blew up straight away and multinationals overseas and big builders in Australia wanted access to the software,” Shane Hodgkins said.
Matrak is used on more than 140 projects across Australia, the United Kingdom, the United States, Hong Kong, Macau, China and Thailand and will use the funding to expand its sales and marketing push into Europe and Asia, particularly China and the United Kingdom.
“It’s a big opportunity to take what is world-leading technology to the rest of the world,” Mr Hodgkins said.
He said working directly with Mr Jasper had been “surreal” as Aconex had always been an inspiration to the brothers.
“Now that we're connecting hundreds of companies globally, being backed by the co-founder of one of Australia's biggest tech successes puts us in a phenomenal position to emulate their trajectory.”
Paul Naphtali of Rampersand said construction technology was a "huge new frontier" with opportunities for scale where technology adoption was not developed yet.
"I think property and building and construction are so central to the Australian DNA that it is such an oversized industry for this country that we've got a really advanced market to sell into," he said. "As opposed to many other industries, you can springboard out of Australia within construction, probably more easily than some others."
The investment brings Matrak’s total funding since launching to $9.8 million. The startup raised $3 million via convertible notes in 2019 and a $765,000 seed round in 2018.