Kojo expands procurement platform ‘to every major trade’

San Francisco-baed construction procurement platform Kojo (formerly known as Agora) said in a late May statement that it plans to expand its platform to every major trade, including mechanical, concrete, drywall, roofing, flooring, and self-perform general contractors. Kojo also shared that it has grown its annual recurring revenue by 4 times, year-over-year.

“The construction industry has been overlooked by tech for too long. By expanding Kojo’s solutions to every major construction trade, we can now help even more contractors solve problems that are critical to their businesses,” Maria Rioumine, co-founder and CEO of Kojo, said in the statement “Our mission is to make it faster, easier, and more sustainable to build the world around us, and I’m so proud of what our team has built to empower contractors in such volatile times.”

With more than $300 billion spent on construction materials annually in the US, Kojo is helping contractors grow more resilient against the extreme volatility in materials prices and supply chain disruptions of the past few years, the statement says. “In just the last year, Kojo launched new products that help contractors manage their warehouse inventory, reconcile invoices, and track their job progress against estimates.

“Using Kojo’s RFQ feature, contractors can quickly check material prices and availability across thousands of vendors, saving 3-5% per order or the equivalent of hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. In the field, Kojo decreases the time supervisors spend managing materials by up to 38% – an average of $175,000 in annual productivity gains. For office teams, Kojo automates manual data entry, shortening the time to process each purchase order by up to 75%, the equivalent of $124,000 in savings per year.”

“Kojo’s solutions completely changed how our team manages our supply chain, which is a life saver given current constraints,” said John Mraz, owner of Einheit Electric Construction Co. based in Ohio. “By just using Kojo’s Request For Quote feature, I would say we’re achieving 10-20% in material savings. The money we save through Kojo allows us to invest further in our team, grow our business, and focus on what we do best – build.”

Last August, Kojo announced its $33 million Series B funding round led by Tiger Global, with additional key investments from 8VC, Tishman Speyer, Jerry Yang, Michael Ovitz, LeFrak, and Kevin Hartz, bringing total funding to $45 million.