Tenderd, a heavy equipment rental marketplace for the construction industry in the MENA region, announced the region’s largest seed funding round of $5.8 million from a spectrum of high profile San Francisco and international investors. Leading the funding round is Y Combinator and BECO and also includes Paul Graham, Peter Thiel, Paul Buchheit, Justin Mateen, Matt Mickiewicz, VentureSouq, SOMA, Dynamo, and Global Founders Capital.
Arjun Mohan, the founder of Tenderd, launched the startup just under 12 months ago having personally faced the problem of finding equipment for his family’s construction business. He joined Y Combinator shortly afterwards to become only the second startup from the region to be accepted into the accelerator. In the interim, Tenderd has grown to become the largest heavy equipment rental marketplace in MENA.
“It is very exciting to see a company from the MENA region taking on a world-class challenge head-on. Arjun and the team at Tenderd are ambitious dreamers and capable executors, the make-up of a great team,” said Yousef Hammad of BECO Capital.
The $635 BN MEA construction market is the fastest growing at 9% CAGR, and Asia-Pac is the largest globally, at $5.1 trillion, growing at 6.3% CAGR. Leveraging local knowledge with digital expertise, Tenderd aims to use their seed capital to streamline the equipment rental process and expand into neighbouring strategic markets.
“With the growing need for dependable equipment delivered quickly and reliably, our investment will help Tenderd offer contractors an efficient way to rent and manage high quality equipment for any construction project,” said Adora Cheung of Y combinator.
Once a contractor hires equipment from Tenderd, they have access to Tenderd’s unique tracking system powered by Artificial Intelligence to increase overall equipment productivity. It also enables them to track and regulate emissions to run equipment more sustainably. Equally, contractors with idle equipment can rent their equipment through Tenderd and maximize fleet utilization.
“We’re a startup run by a small, tight-knit team tackling a large and exciting problem,” said Arjun Mohan, founder of Tenderd. “The construction industry has always lagged in adopting technology. However, our clients are increasingly more receptive to solutions that will help increase productivity and reduce capital investments. Our goal is to combine the efficiencies of a marketplace with the latest technologies to help them better compete.”
