New construction-tech startup, Assignar, and Australian fintech EFTsure, have secured a combined $5 million Series A funding through a new Venture Capital firm Our Innovation Fund (OIF).
Assignar, a cloud based SaaS platform built to help construction contractors improve efficiency and safety, secured $3 million, while EFTsure - a secure payments data platform - announced it raised $2 million to launch its business. The startup was founded by serial entrepreneurs Sean McCreanor and Marko Tomic.
Assignar says the capital raising was undertaken to accelerate growth through direct sales and channel partners, before expanding the footprint in the US market, where it already has a presence through in-bound leads as well as the ongoing development of the platform.
Sean McCreanor, founder and CEO of Assignar said: “construction technology services will boom in the next few years, off the back of the Federal Government’s $75 billion investment in Australian infrastructure projects and an existing $16 billion construction pipeline”.
{loadposition peter}“We couldn’t be more excited about the next phase of Assignar’s business growth. Partnering with OIF provides us with not only the capital we need to continue to grow and expand, but, more importantly, they’re a true partner that will help guide the strategic direction of the company, open doors and help us take this business to the next level.”
David Shein, a Founding Partner of OIF, said: “We’re incredibly excited about the opportunity ahead for Assignar and we’re grateful to be partnering with such an exceptional team led by Sean and Marko. Assignar has a great product which is generating real traction in the market and that’s being demonstrated by the increasing list of customers and its fast growing annual recurring revenues.
“We’re looking forward to working with the team to build on this success and to grow Assignar into a global leader in the construction software market. We believe Assignar has the potential to be a great Australian technology company, exporting its product to the world and one that we can all be immensely proud of,” said Shein.
EFTsure says the funding injection will be used to scale the business and to address new initiatives such as the rollout of the New Payments Platform (NPP) in October this year.
Established in 2014 and founded by a team of banking technology and finance professionals Ian Mirels, Mike Kontorovich and Mark Chazan, EFTsure provides a specialised software solution to enterprises, validating the integrity of their payment data and ensuring the name of the payee matches the BSB and account number prior to making a payment.
According to Ian Mirels, the risk of payment fraud is high in Australia with many finance officers unaware that Australian banks don’t match payee names with account numbers when payments are processed - leaving enterprises vulnerable to fraud and error from internal and external threats.
“Payments fraud is a growing area of cybercrime in Australia, with fast payment methods significantly increasing the risk of fraudulent activity. It’s critical to ensure a focus on both fast and secure payments as the new NPP platform is introduced”, Mirels says.
Our Innovation Fund’s Geoff Levy AO, said, “payments protection is an essential need world wide. EFTsure is in a pivotal position to capitalise on the growing demand for this need given their deeply experienced team and their established client base”.
“Our Innovation Fund is excited to partner with EFTsure to accelerate their growth. EFTsure are already seeing a large value proposition in what they’re doing to reduce the incidence and opportunity for fraud and error.
“We understand the average cost of a cybercrime attack to an Australian business is in the order of $276,000. As a current and former director of several ASX companies, having EFTsure’s payment protection in place – especially in the challenging environment of increasing internal and external payment fraud risk – gives me more comfort. EFTsure is a necessary tool in a company’s toolbox in the fight against cybercrime.”