{"id":37356,"date":"2023-10-20T14:49:37","date_gmt":"2023-10-20T14:49:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/startupsmart.test\/2023\/10\/20\/construction-hire-startup-iseekplant-seeks-to-build-on-1-million-startupsmart\/"},"modified":"2023-10-20T14:49:37","modified_gmt":"2023-10-20T14:49:37","slug":"construction-hire-startup-iseekplant-seeks-to-build-on-1-million-startupsmart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/uncategorized\/construction-hire-startup-iseekplant-seeks-to-build-on-1-million-startupsmart\/","title":{"rendered":"Construction hire startup iSeekplant seeks to build on $1 million – StartupSmart"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Construction equipment hire platform iSeekplant<\/a> has raised $1 million from a number of undisclosed closed angel investors to help drive growth and launch a new custom offering. <\/p>\n

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The online database connects large construction and mining companies with equipment hiring businesses, who then quote and bid for the jobs.<\/p>\n

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ISeekplant director Matt Peters says the cash injection will be used to expand the service across Australia, and develop a new bespoke option.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWe\u2019ll use the money to build some scale and more aggressively infiltrate the market,\u201d Peters says.<\/p>\n

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The startup now has 70,000 monthly users, up from 12,000 in February, making it the most used plant hire site in Australia. It boasts a database of more than 50,000 machines for hire and users make 6000 daily searches.<\/p>\n

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Peters says the growth has been very positive, especially in the last six months.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThere are only a certain number of people in plant procurement, so we\u2019re really, really happy to have an audience of that magnitude,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThere\u2019s been tremendous growth in traffic onto the site and in the number of new companies coming to us.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u201cAll the metrics are heading in the right direction. The contractors love it, and plant hire companies are coming to us in numbers.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Peters says the service helps to improve transparency and efficiency in the construction equipment hire sector.<\/p>\n

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\u201cIf you\u2019ve got a construction site going on, whether it\u2019s a backyard pool or large mine, you\u2019ll be able to find what you want on our site,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

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\u201cIt\u2019s a huge market, and a good chunk of them don\u2019t have a web presence. Collecting everyone and putting them in a central area where everyone else can find them is where the value is.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The startup launched in 2012 and has been forced to do things a bit more traditionally due to the state of the industry.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWe\u2019re building an online solution but doing it in an old-fashioned way,\u201d Peters says.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWe\u2019ve been driving around the country meeting people. The nature of our customers is that they\u2019re not traditionally tech savvy for the most part, so we\u2019ve had to walk a lot of people through the process.\u201d<\/p>\n

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ISeekplant was backed by 3D-positioning and survey solutions giant Position Partners in January last year in exchange for an undisclosed equity stake.<\/p>\n

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While focus is on growing nationally in the short-term, Peters says he\u2019s open to looking globally at some point.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThe opportunity is there for us, but at the moment the Australian market is definitely juicy enough,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWe\u2019ve always got our eyes on the horizon.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Raising your <\/i>first round of capital<\/i><\/a>? Starting a <\/i>crowdfunding campaign<\/i><\/a>? Want to grow your business <\/i>with Instagram?<\/i><\/a> StartupSmart School can help.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Construction equipment hire platform iSeekplant has raised $1 million from a number of undisclosed closed angel investors to help drive<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":61941,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37356"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37356"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37356\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61941"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}