Construction industry platform rebrands
Construction industry procurement platform, Kojo, formerly known as Agora, announced its new name and expansion of its platform to every major trade, including mechanical, concrete, drywall, roofing, flooring, and self-perform general contractors.
“The construction industry has been overlooked by tech for too long,” said Maria Rioumine, co-founder and CEO of Kojo. “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.”
With more than $300 billion spent on construction materials annually in the U.S., said Kojo, it is helping contractors grow more resilient against the extreme volatility in materials prices and supply chain disruptions of the past few years, said the firm.
“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,” said Rioumine.
In just the last year, Kojo said it launched new products that help contractors manage their warehouse inventory, reconcile invoices, and track their job progress against estimates.
Using its Request For Quote (RFQ) feature, the firm said, 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 said it 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.
“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,” said Mraz.
Kojo also shared that it has grown its annual recurring revenue by four times year-over-year.
Kojo, based in San Francisco, connects office teams, field crews, and vendors on one all-inclusive procurement platform to give contractors control over their procurement process from takeoff to closeout.