Construction industry in Indonesia It grows quickly, driven by residential and industrial buildings, along with infrastructure development plans set by the government. However, obtaining skilled labor remains a time-consuming process, often relying on personal networks and lengthy recruitment efforts. Founders Gravel She wants to change that by making it easier to find workers and other construction professionals. The Jakarta-based startup announced today that it has raised $14 million.
Investors include New Enterprise Associate (NEA), Marvell Technology Group Co-Founder Weili Tai, Cadence Design System CEO Lip-Bu Tan, SMDV, East Ventures, and other strategic investors. Gravel is NEA’s first investment in Southeast Asia. While Gravel is currently focused on Indonesia, it plans to enter international markets and will use its funding to expand its business.
Gravel started in 2019 as an app to connect users with construction workers. The platform now has four main features — Gravel Construction for hiring construction workers daily, Gravel Borongan for building on lump sum contracts, Gravel Maintenance for on-demand home repairs, and Gravel Material for ordering tools and materials.
Gravel says it saw revenue grow 45x between 2020 and 2022, and now has 1.7 million workers on the platform. It has been used in 6,000 projects in 20 Indonesian provinces, ranging from residential construction to larger projects such as LRT Jabadebek (Greater Jakarta Light Rail Line), Jakarta International Stadium, Bilni Hospital, and Keungman IMAX Theatre.
The startup’s co-founders are Chairman Nicholas Suttarja and co-CEOs Jorge Virdoindra Pietra and Freddy Ianto. Before launching Gravel, Petra graduated from UC Berkeley with a master’s degree in civil and environmental engineering and spent time working in the construction industry, where he saw challenges in finding labor.
“There have been numerous occasions of inefficient supply and demand on a large construction project where hundreds of workers were sitting idle to get paid while the project was on hold for a short period, and on other occasions where additional workers were urgently needed but it took weeks to gather them.” He said. Sometimes, workers were sent back to their villages to hire hundreds of additional workers in a time-consuming process. Seeking to solve the problem, Petra and Yanto began working on Gravel with their own funding in 2017, before launching it in 2019 after securing funding.
Skilled labor is often obtained through personal networks or by recruiting large groups of people from the same village who usually work as farmers or fishermen, but are employed in short-term projects. At Gravel, users are matched with providers through Gravel’s personalized job feed, which the startup says reduces the time it takes to find the right people from about two weeks to minutes.
Before starting Gravel, workers need to have previous experience. They also undergo screening in the form of online tests, skill assessments and periodic training and development sessions.
Construction workers are paid daily within 24 hours after project completion through Gravel’s payment system. Petra says quick payment helps workers become financially resilient, which in turn improves their performance at work. Other benefits of using Gravel for workers include access to ongoing employment opportunities, workshops, certification training, a loyalty and rewards program, and health and wellbeing support, he adds. Meanwhile, for service providers, Gravel can increase their visibility to clients, attract a wider range of projects and work packages, give them access to partners and services in their supply and demand chains and more efficiently match potential clients.
Gravel also includes real-time analysis of project activities that gives an overview of the current stage of construction for the project, how many workers it needs and the types of materials and equipment required. This helps in client budget calculations and decision making. Future plans include a predictive model to monitor construction progress.
In a statement, Carmen Chang, NEA Partner and Head of Asia, said: “Gravel is our first investment in Southeast Asia, and we are excited about the company’s potential to advance Indonesia’s construction industry through technology.”