Vancouver’s BuildDirect has raised another $50 million in financing, bringing the company’s valuation to about $500 million, according to BuildDirect founder and CEO Jeff Booth.
The latest round of venture capital (VC) financing comes from new and existing investors, including Mohr Davidow Ventures, OMERS Ventures and BMO Asset Management.
It’s on top of $16 million that the company raised from OMERS in 2012 and another $30 million in a series B round last year led by Mohr Davidow Ventures.
BuildDirect has raised a total of $110 million in VC financing to date, bringing its valuation to about $500 million.
Booth said the money will be used to expand the company’s home marketplace platform for both buyers and sellers.
BuildDirect, sometimes called the Amazon of building supplies, helps source a range of building materials from suppliers around the world and has an extensive North American delivery network that includes 12 warehouses and trucking and rail network that allows it to deliver materials in bulk at dramatically lower prices.
It has always been available to ordinary homeowners who may be renovating or building a new home, but for the most part it has been mostly builders who use it.
The new platform that BuildDirect is developing will make it easier for both ordinary buyers and suppliers to connect.
“We actually cannot keep up to the demand from buyers, or the demand from sellers,” Booth told Business in Vancouver.
The new platform will help suppliers connect more easily with buyers and provide them with valuable analytics. It will also allow customers to post feedback on sellers. BuildDirect currently has about 2,500 suppliers selling products through its platform.
“We would expect to quintuple the number of suppliers or amount of products on the site,” Booth said.
“This financing underscores the speed at which old-world industries are breaking down, and platform companies that leverage cutting-edge technology and data analytics, like BuildDirect, are putting the power in the hands of both the supply and demand side,” said Katherine Barr, general partner for Mohr Davidow Ventures.
“Home improvement is a half-trillion dollar industry and is severely fragmented and inefficient. BuildDirect is disrupting the existing supply chain in this industry and building a completely new, highly efficient and smart system that suppliers and consumers alike will benefit from tremendously.”
