Graneet raises $8.7 million for its vertical SaaS for construction companies

French startup Graneet is building an all-in-one software-as-a-service product focused on small construction companies. It has grown quite a lot since first covered as the company has tripled its revenue over the past six months.

That’s why the startup raised a €8 million Series A round ($8.7 million at today’s exchange rate) with its two main investors leading the round once again — Point Nine and Foundamental. In fact, Graneet tells me that 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 Phiture, and several business angels are also investing in Graneet, including Rodolphe Ardant from Spendesk, Nicolas Dessaigne who co-founded Algolia and JC Taunay-Bucalo at TravelPerk.

Graneet is a vertical SaaS, meaning that the startup is building a product that is specifically designed to address the needs of an industry in particular. Due to the founder’s background, Graneet is focusing on construction companies.

And that’s an interesting choice as there’s a long tail of small construction companies that don’t necessarily have the right tools to track their projects, create quotes, manage team members and handle the relationship with subcontractors. So Graneet is building a sort of mini ERP for construction SMBs. Big construction companies aren’t going to switch to Graneet, but it doesn’t make sense to use a full-fledged ERP if you are just running a small company.

As construction work usually takes several months, it can be hard to track margins at any point in time. Clients pay in multiple tranches and construction companies gradually spend money. Having a copilot like Graneet can improve the planning strategy of construction companies.

“We have been iterating over the past 2 years with our clients and prospects to build a powerful, yet very simple-to-use solution. Graneet has now proven to be mature enough as a product to be able to accelerate its customer acquisition while we keep serving our customers better and better with more possibilities inside our product,” co-founder and CEO Jean-Gabriel Niel said in a statement.

In addition to acquiring more customers, there’s a long roadmap ahead for Graneet. Once the platform is actively used by a bunch of construction companies, Graneet can offer additional services, such as financial products or deep integrations with third-party services. In other words, the startup has a shot at digitizing and industry that could benefit from modern software tools.