Granit raises $8.7 million for real SaaS for construction companies

French startup Graneet is building an all-in-one software-as-a-service product aimed at small construction companies. And since I first covered the company, it has grown tremendously because the company has tripled its revenue in the last six months.

That’s why the startup raised an 8 million euro Series A round (at today’s exchange rate) with its two main investors leading the round again – Point Nine and Foundation. In fact, Graneet told me this is Point Nine’s first lead investment in a Series A round. This is an interesting data point as Point Nine has a good track record when it comes to B2B SaaS investments.

Axeleo Capital, RAISE Sherpas’ philanthropic vehicle feature, and several business angels are also investing in Granet, including Rodolphe Ardent from Spendesk, Nicolas Desaigne who co-founded Algolia and JC Taunay-Bucalo at TravelPerk.

Graneet is a vertical SaaS, which means the startup is building a product specifically designed to meet the needs of an industry. Because of the founder’s background, Granet is focusing on construction companies.

And this is a very interesting choice for long-tail small construction companies that do not have the tools to properly monitor their projects, create quotes, manage team members and communicate with subcontractors. So Graneet is building a kind of small ERP for construction SMBs. Big construction companies won’t switch to Granite, but if you’re running a small company, it doesn’t make sense to go full ERP.

As construction work takes several months, it can be difficult to track profitability at any given time. Customers pay in installments and construction companies spend money gradually. Having a pilot like Granet can improve the planning strategy of construction companies.

“Over the past 2 years, we’ve been reiterating our promise to build a robust, yet easy-to-use solution with our customers. Graneet has now matured enough as a product to accelerate customer discovery while serving our customers better and better,” said co-founder and CEO Jean-Gabriel Niel in a statement.

In addition to acquiring more customers, a long roadmap awaits for Grenette. Once the platform is actively used by several construction companies, Graneet can offer additional services, such as financial products or deep integration with third-party services. In other words, startups have an industry that can benefit from digitization and modern software tools.