The French startup Graneet, which markets SaaS financial management software for construction companies, has just completed a fundraising of 8 million euros. Business Cool spoke with Jean-Gabriel Niel, CEO and one of the three co-founders of Graneet, to learn more about his upcoming projects.
Everything you need to know about Graneet
Who are you ?
My name is Jean-Gabriel. I am the CEO and one of the three co-founders of Graneet. With a financial background and after a few years of Private Equity and Venture Capital, I joined Kantox in 2014, a FinTech which has just been acquired by BNP Paribas, where I was notably able to create the product team and expand it to seven people.
In 2019, during a consulting mission, I supported a construction SME to set up commercial management software and I discovered that the financial and administrative monitoring of a construction site is very complicated and time-consuming. And yet, today, 50% of construction SMEs still use Excel to monitor the financial aspects of their project with all the problems that this entails: loss of time, duplication of data, manual errors… And, in reality, it This is because the existing offer is not suitable for SMEs: there are only gas plant solutions that are too expensive with multiple costs that pile up: training, configuration, servers and so on. This is why we created Graneet in 2020, with the aim of becoming the reference solution for any construction company in France first, then abroad.
What does Graneet do?
Graneet is a SaaS financial management software for construction companies, a “mini-ERP”. Over the past two years, we have worked with our customers and prospects to develop a powerful, yet very easy to use solution with three main features:
- creation and monitoring of commercial opportunities;
- invoicing and collection;
- financial analysis (margin, expenses) through different dashboards.
With Graneet, construction managers can access the cockpit of their company by finding all the key indicators of their company in the same place, save time on their processes and improve their margin level.
Graneet’s fundraising
Why did you raise 8 million euros?
This fundraising will allow us to continue the development of Graneet through three main axes: strengthening our presence in France, the possibility of offering complementary services to our customers and the start of our European expansion.
Thanks to these funds, we first plan to strengthen our position on the French market which has nearly 100,000 SMEs in the construction sector, by increasing from 30 to 60 employees. Our desire is in particular to strengthen our sales team and create a marketing department.
At the same time, we want to create partnerships to integrate complementary services into the platform. Thanks to financial partners, we could, for example, offer our customers the ability to connect their bank account in order to integrate a cash flow management solution. Finally, Graneet aims to become a European leader. The idea would be to open a first country, perhaps in the south of Europe, from 2024. We are thinking in particular of Spain, where the construction market is similar to that of France in terms of number of SMEs and state of digitalization. The problem is the same everywhere: construction SMEs in Europe are poorly addressed and poorly served.
Why did you choose to bring these investors into your capital?
Grannet brought Point Nine Capital, Foundamental, Axeleo, Raise Sherpas as well as business angels into its capital.
Point Nine Capital and Foundamental, respectively specialized in B2B SaaS and Tech construction, are our historical investors who led the Seed round. As the Series A approach approached, they offered us a deal with very good conditions allowing us to avoid a time-consuming roadshow: we therefore accepted this great opportunity. Moreover, for the record, this is the very first time that Point Nine has led a Series A financing round. This is interesting data, because Point Nine has a good track record in investments in the field of B2B SaaS.
Axeleo Capital, Phiture, the philanthropic vehicle of RAISE Sherpas, and several business angels are also investing in Graneet, including Rodolphe Ardant, founder of Spendesk, Nicolas Dessaigne, founder of Algolia, and JC Taunay-Bucalo, CRO of TravelPerk. They are real assets for us due to their expertise in the sector, but also their network.
What will Graneet look like in 5 years?
I like to think that Graneet will have become the reference for all construction SMEs in France and why not in Europe! In 5 years, our solution will be interconnected with a good number of tools, both financial and very operational in site management. It will become an essential profitability asset for all these construction SMEs. I would also like to eventually build a “Graneet Academy” which gives players in construction SMEs the opportunity to train and obtain, for example, recognized certifications.
