Solved for you: Construction Headaches

If you have ever been involved in construction of any building – be it your home or office – it will be rare that you came out of that experience without headaches or extreme frustrations. Shoddy work, labour related issues, product quality problems, running around searching for the right products, delay in material delivery, wrong product dispatch, damaged product received – the list goes on and on. After all this, you wonder whether you got your money’s worth.

At some point or the other, we have all been in that situation or heard about someone who went through that experience. Need of the hour is a transparent end-to-end solution for all your construction requirements – be it procurement, professional advice, authentic peer reviews on related goods and services, right service provider discovery et al – without having to burn a hole in our pocket. Enter BuildNext, a group of experienced professionals from IITs, IIMs and other premier institutes who are looking to provide you just this.

Supported by the Kerala Startup Mission and funded by Kerala State Industrial Development Corporation, BuildNext uses internet technology to bring onto your fingertips the best offers in building materials and an unbeatable selection of products, from across the country. BuildNext represents a new generation of Kerala’s industry, where our entrepreneurs are creating solutions for our existing issues. BuildNext offers an assisted buying service, and provides customers assistance for making the right choices for your buildings, from reputed professionals across the country.

BuildNext is also offering full material contracts to enable customers building their homes build better while saving their hard earned money. That is not all, BuildNext technology team is building value added services like visualization (you can see how a product looks like in different spaces), material selector (a tool which will help you choose the right product based on your needs without external help) and BuildNext Connect – a networking platform for you to get all your questions and concerns answered by professionals and peers from the industry, which will also help you to identify the right service provider for you –  be it an architect, an interior designer, a contractor, a consultant or a civil engineer.

Team

The brains behind this concept are two Kerala born entrepreneurs who are batch mates from IIM Bangalore batch of 2012. Gopikrishnan, gold medalist architect from IIT Kharagpur, and Finaz Naha, computer science engineer from NIT Calicut founded BuildNext in 2015 aiming to simplify and revolutionize the way construction happens in the country. Gopikrishnan says “We want the common man to get accessible advice to make the right choices, while removing inefficiencies to get the customers price advantages too.

The current opaque way of execution inherently makes it disadvantageous to the customer leading to bad experiences” Finaz adds, “Customers often have to resort to lower quality materials due to availability issues and lack of information. We have resolved that forever – now customers can procure materials from anywhere, and we shall make sure that the materials are delivered at their sites”. Gopikrishnan, with his experience of designing and planning more than 6 mn sq.ft of residential and commercial development across various metros, and Finaz who led analytics and performance management teams for Amazon’s India and US transportation networks are heavily banking on their expertise to solve a complex problem.

They have a great team of professionals with extensive experience in the field of technology, procurement management and logistics to help them pull this through. Gopikrishnan notes “This is a significant undertaking. We won’t be able to do justice to such a solution without a great team. Fortunately, we have been able to put together a brilliant one. We are sure we can add great value to our customers”.

Home or Onsite Delivery

BuildNext has tied up with logistics service providers from across geographies to help customers source material from manufacturers and wholesalers for their uses, whether for a single purchase or a full construction. BuildNext is currently serving customers all across Kerala, and aims to create a completely hassle free procurement experience for its customers, whether a single item or a few trucks full of materials.

Anoop Adhur Kutty, HR Professional with UST Global says ““Very easy to navigate to the product you need, compare prices and quality, and make the purchase. Received the shipment in 2 days and I was able to fix the maintenance issue at home in a week’s time which otherwise would have taken a lot more time searching for a shop and product”

BuildNext engages a combination of hyperlocal and pan geography logistics model to provide the best possible pricing on their procurement solution. BuildNext currently has more than 130 partnered sellers and above 50 brands of products already available on the platform. BuildNext team is actively working to identify the right partner sellers to provide maximum benefit to the end customer and are working on adding innovative products to their selection.  BuildNext hopes to bring greater visibility to the small scale industries building innovative and good quality materials to the customers. “Sourcing local products”, Gopikrishnan says, “helps save costs and is more energy efficient, while it also supports the local economy.”

Convenient and Helpful

Captain Jerrin Rajan, merchant navy captain and a happy customer, says “Received their delivery right on time. I was really worried about my project because of the time factor. I was at the port during worktime and feel really exhausted to go for purchase at night. Then I heard about them and started ordering online. Not only that it helps me to avoid price bargaining with the retailer, but also I grew confident about the timely delivery. One time I even requested for an express delivery and delivery happened the very next day. The option to select budget or premium product is an outstanding addition. Impressed to see the efforts by them and wish my bests to them.”

Manu, one of their NRI customers, is building a house in Trivandrum. He says, “I work in Abu Dhabi and I recently purchased flooring and sanitary ware from their portal for my house renovation. I was searching options for selection of materials for my house renovation and found their site. I was totally impressed by the selection they had in each section, not to mention the price benefit too. Moreover, the team at BuildNext really helped me in finding out the right product. Awesome work done by the team in the delivery of products right on time. My biggest concern of requesting my old aged parents to go shopping for construction materials is eliminated because of them. I will definitely recommend it to all my friends. “

Know more by visiting their website at www.buildnext.in