London-based Qflow (Qualis Flow), a digital platform enabling construction teams to collect real-time materials and waste data at source, announced on Tuesday, May 30, that it has secured £7.2M (nearly €8.34M) in a Series A round of funding.
Qflow says it will use the funds to scale its operations in the UK and grow its presence in the US and Australia.
Prior to this round, PiLabs, MMC, Goldacre, Entrepreneur First (EF London 10), and angel investors invested £2.4M (approximately €2.78M) in two seed rounds for Qflow.
Investors supporting Qflow
The current round was led by London-based climate tech VC Systemiq Capital.
Matthew Goldstein, General Partner at Systemiq Capital, says, “Qflow uniquely aligns the goals of construction CFOs and sustainability executives, accelerating customers’ decarbonisation ambitions while saving them time, money and reducing regulatory risk.”
“We are leading their Series A, at a time when most VCs are scaling back their activities, to accelerate and capitalise on this unique opportunity and critical mission.”
The round also saw participation from a group of investors across the construction industry and technology such as Bridge Investment Group, Grosvenor, Ascension Ventures, Gravel Rd, Greensoil Proptech Ventures, John Emrey (CEO of Alder properties), and Suffolk Tech.
Andy Doyle, Innovation Director at Grosvenor UK, adds, “We see real potential in what this technology can do for the construction sector – it makes the management of deliveries and waste much easier for our onsite teams and provides greater accuracy, and accountability, in our environmental reporting.”
“To create circular supply chains in construction, we must be able to reliably account for what happens with construction waste – Qflow provides this clarity.”
Decarbonising construction globally
Founded in 2018 by Brittany Harris and Jade Cohen, Qflow is a digital platform that construction teams can use to gather materials and waste data in real-time at the point of source, empowering project teams to decide on costs, carbon footprints, and quality.
Qflow aims to become the industry-leading solution for capturing and using material and waste data on active construction sites in the UK.
It accomplishes this by collaborating with construction teams to provide them the tools required to monitor and control their social and environmental effect, and improve it through data-driven decision-making.
Brittany Harris says, “Jade and I love the construction industry, it literally builds the world around us. But for it to build the sustainable future we need, it must change and reduce its negative impacts on our planet.”
“To us, it was clear we had to tackle our own industry to have a chance of leaving this world in a better place, and this is why we founded Qflow.”
“The support we’ve received from big players in the sector shows they also see the importance of changing processes and accelerating this transformation towards a more sustainable future.”
With Qflow, waste can be decreased by providing real-time data and analytics; efficiency can be increased by automating and digitising a manual process; transparency about carbon savings can be provided; the circular economy can be enabled; and performance can be improved.
Currently, the companies using Qflow include Berkeley Group, Canary Wharf Group, Grosvenor, Landsec, Morgan Sindall, Multiplex, and Workplace Futures, among others.
The company is also hiring for both technical and commercial roles in an effort to double its current 30-person staff by the end of 2024.
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