Nigerian construction procurement startup, Cutstruct, raises $600k in pre-seed funding
Solving hassles arising from nontransparent prices and supply bureaucracy among others in the construction industry, CutStruct Technology was founded in 2019 by John Oamen and Tayo Odunsi to solve these problems by providing an all-in-one service platform as well as its flagship product, LiveVend.
This problem is prevalent everywhere in the world such that delays in payment, procurement of goods etc might lead to poor project delivery. To disrupt this, LiveVend offers a platform to compare market prices thereby saving customers money, hiring consultancy services or buying directly from the platform and access to delivery.
In the latest development by the company, Cutstruct has secured $600k in its pre-seed round led by Zedcrest Capital, DFS Lab and Lofty Inc, with the participation of angel investors including Kola Aina to further enhance LiveVend.
The construction procurement platform is open to buyers such as real estate developers and contractors to engage vetted vendors. For seamless customer experience, a trade credit provider, Specta for Business by Sterling Bank is a buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) product integrated into LiveVend.
Customers also have access to other exclusive packages including insurance provided by Axa Mansard, escrow service by Apel Trustees, vendor verification by VerifyMe, and legal and deal structuring by Greychapel Legal.
Speaking on the raise, CEO of CutStruct, John Oamen 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”.
Partner at DFS Lab, Stephen Deng noted that the construction industry and innovators in Nigeria and virtually across Africa is untapped. “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 opportunities to digitise large value streams in the process. The team’s expertise within the industry and their vision to offer highly relevant services backed by their own on-the-ground experiences have been deeply impressive,” he said.
Also commenting on the investment, CEO Zedcrest Capital, Dayo Amzat said: “Over the last decade, Africa in general, has seen tremendous improvement in many sectors of the economy ranging from payments, e-Commerce, banking, telecoms 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. This fits into our interest at Zedcrest, and is in line with a major market development initiative we are currently pursuing with an African-focused housing-DFI.”
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