The company claims to get 750-800 orders a month with an average order size of Rs67,000.
New Delhi: Glow Homes Technologies Pvt. Ltd, which owns and operates Buildzar, an e-commerce portal for construction materials, has raised $4 million from Puneet Dalmia, managing director of Dalmia Bharat Ltd.
Dalmia has made the investment in his individual capacity.
“The funding will be used for team expansion, product enhancement and marketing activities,” said Vineet Singh, co-founder and chief executive of Buildzar, declining to share further details on the funding.
Founded by Vineet Singh and Swapnil Tripathi in September 2015, the company offers a range of construction materials such as steel, sand, bathroom fittings, electrical, and tiles. It operates in Delhi and the national capital region (NCR) surrounding the national capital and has at least 350 vendors listed on the site.
It accepts orders from the customers on its site and then alerts the vendors who take care of the logistics. The company charges a commission from the vendors.
Buildzar currently has 70 employees and plans to add 30 more by June 2016. “This is a very exciting business as the customer here is very unique. A house construction is usually a customer’s second biggest financial transaction in his lifetime, with the biggest being purchase of a home,” said Singh.
“The market size of home construction spends for B2C (business to consumer) segment is $150 billion and is growing phenomenally,” he added.
The company claims to get 750-800 orders a month with an average order size ofRs.67,000.
It currently plans to focus in the Delhi-NCR region and will expand to Bangalore, Chennai and Hyderabad after six months.
The company works with brands such as ACC Ltd, Ultratech Cement Ltd, ArcelorMittal, JK Lakshmi Cement Ltd, Havells India Ltd, Asian Paints Ltd and Jaquar Sanitary Ware India Pvt. Ltd.
While few companies offer end-to-end solutions in the construction material domain, online marketplace Snapdeal last year launched a tools and hardware category, under which it sells construction material such as cement, paint, sanitary ware, and bathroom and kitchen fittings.
The company will also compete with Bangalore-based Buildkar (Apnastock Solutions Pvt. Ltd ) which raised an undisclosed amount in a seed round from Meher Group chief executive Mustafa Wajid, Gaadi.com founder Umang Kumar and other angel investors earlier this month.
[“source-Livemint”]