Japan venture capital (VC) firm 31VENTURES has recently made an investment with Dronomy Ltd., an Isreali-based construction technology startup that provides a drone-based solution.
Mitsui Fudosan’s 31VENTURES has led the round along with other existing investors which include Battery Ventures, Lool Ventures, and Oryzn Capital which had also participated.
The announcement about the funding came on Friday, December 9 through the corporate VC fund – 31VENTURES Global Innovation Fund, an investment platform which is jointly operated by Global Brain Corporation for speedy investments.
No financial details were disclosed about this funding rounds. Though it is known that this funding round will allow the company to launch its solution into international markets and to ramp up its acquisition, starting Q1 2017.
Founded by two physicists interested in autonomous drone flight, current CEO Ori Aphek and VP of R&D Dr. Guy Raz, the venture identified the gap in the ability of construction companies to frequently and accurately monitor their construction sites.
The Tel Aviv startup leveraged upon this. providing the solution of a software company that builds actionable knowledge into construction projects through the analysis of unique and frequent project data collected by autonomous drones.
These pieces of information collected and analysed are shared via the cloud to relevant construction projects.
Commenting on the investment, Akira Sugawara, the GM of 31Ventures said, “It did not take us long to realise the outstanding business potential of Dronomy, which led us to make our first-ever investment in an Israeli technology company.
“The construction market, its challenges and the opportunities it encapsulates are well known to us. We were impressed to see how Dronomy and its remarkable team understand and address these challenges,” Sugarawa further adds.
Construction companies, developers, and subcontractors are beginning to realise the benefits of incorporating these unique technological solutions as part of their business processes.
With Dronomy, the process of mapping, monitoring, inspecting and sharing site details becomes an autonomous part of the daily site routine, leading to reduce in ever-occurring project delays, exceeding cost budgets, and disputes.
These can account for a significant percentage of a project’s overall costs. Besides, construction companies can also use Dronomy to build a knowledge corpus that can be shared over the cloud to all relevant stakeholders.
“We are consistently receiving extraordinary feedback from customers who experience what our solutions can do for them. This is now ratified by one of the world’s largest players in our market,” said Ori Aphek, the Founder and CEO of Dronomy.
“Our ability to make consumer drones fly low and close to construction sites, capture the right visual data, translate it into knowledge, and appropriately deliver this knowledge is what makes us different,” Aphek adds.
In September 2015, Dronomy has raised US$ 1.5 million funding led by Battery Ventures with participation from other VC fimrs and angel investors.
By Vivian Foo, Unicorn Media
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