Indonesia’s construction industry is is growing rapidly, driven by residential and industrial buildings, alongside infrastructure development plans by the government. However, sourcing skilled labor is still a time-consuming process and often relies on personal networks and long-term recruitment efforts. Its founders Gravel they want 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 executive chairman 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 for business expansion.
Gravel started in 2019 as an app to connect users with construction workers. The platform now has four main features—Gravel Construction for hiring daily construction workers, Gravel Borongan for construction on lump sum contracts, Gravel Maintenance for on-demand home repairs, and Gravel Material for ordering tools and materials.
Gravel says it saw a 45x increase in revenue between 2020 and 2022 and now has 1.7 million workers on the platform. It has been used for 6,000 projects in 20 provinces in Indonesia, ranging from residential constructions to larger ones such as the Jabadebek (Greater Jakarta Light Rail Transit) LRT, Jakarta International Stadium, Pelni Hospital and Keong Man IMAX Theatre.
The startup’s co-founders are president Nicholas Sutardja and co-CEOs Georgi Ferdwindra Petra and Fredy Yanto. Before launching Gravel, Petra graduated from UC Berkeley with a master’s in civil and environmental engineering and spent time working in the construction industry, where he saw challenges with finding work.
Co-founders and CEOs of Gravel, Georgi Ferdwindra Putra and Fredy Yanto
“There have been many cases of demand and supply inefficiencies on a large construction project where hundreds of workers sat idle and were paid while the project was on a short pause and other cases where additional workers were urgently needed but took weeks to assemble,” he said. Workers were sometimes sent back to their villages to hire hundreds of additional workers in a time-consuming process. Looking for a solution to the problem, Petra and Yanto started working on Gravel with their own funds in 2017, before launching it in 2019 after securing funding.
Skilled labor often comes from personal networks or by recruiting large groups of people from the same village who usually work as farmers or fishermen, but are hired for short-term projects. At Gravel, users are matched with service providers through Gravel’s Personalized Job Feed, which the startup says cuts the time spent finding the right people from about two weeks to minutes.
Before starting at Gravel, workers must have previous experience. They are also tested in the form of online tests and skills assessments, as well as periodic training and development sessions.
Daily construction workers are paid within 24 hours of completing a project through Gravel’s payment system. Petra says quick payment helps employees’ financial resilience, in turn improving their work performance. He adds that other benefits of using Gravel for employees include access to ongoing job opportunities, workshops and certificate training, a loyalty and bonus program, and health and wellness support. For service providers, meanwhile, Gravel can increase their visibility to clients, attract a wider range of projects and work packages, give them access to partners and services in the supply and demand chains, and more effective matching with potential clients .
Gravel also includes real-time analysis of project activities that gives an overview of a project’s current stage of construction, how many workers it needs, and what types of materials and equipment are required. This helps in the client’s budget calculations and decision making. Future plans include a forecasting model to monitor construction progress.
In a statement, NEA partner and head of Asia Carmen Chang said: “Gravel is our first investment in Southeast Asia and we are excited about the company’s potential to elevate Indonesia’s construction industry through technology.”
