Alrik raises €1M Seed to streamline construction transport

Swedish operations software provider Alrik has raised €1M in Seed funding to expand further across Europe. Alrik specifically targets the construction sector with its software that enables supervisors to monitor fleet activity on a centralised system. Construction work accounted for 34 per cent of carbon dioxide emissions in 2021 with transport contributing one fifth of that figure; efficiency savings within the industry’s distribution channels can reduce carbon emissions drastically.

Early users of Alrik’s software have reported reduced fleet emissions of up to 10 per cent, with one customer seeing fleet costs reduced by a third after six months of use.

The SaaS provider already has over 100 customers, including many of Europe’s largest distributors such as global building materials giant Saint-Gobain, northern European market leaders STARK Group, Kesko, Bygma, Mestergruppen as well as Swedish trade companies Karl Hedin and Woody.

Global VC firm Pi Labs, who focus on digital solutions for sustainability, provided the funding. The firm has made over 80 investments since 2015, across 15 countries, over three funds, and has delivered 14 exits. Alrik’s previous investors include iCloud veteran Olivier Bonnet, former Gorillas COO Adrian Frenzel and Klarna’s Chief Expansion and Operating Officer, Camilla Giesecke.

The company was founded in 2022 by fintech founder Axel Enblad and Nici Sundén-Cullberg, an investment banker at Morgan Stanley, and launched last year. Among its customers are global building materials giant Saint-Gobain, northern European market leaders STARK Group, Kesko, Bygma, Mestergruppen as well as Swedish trade companies Karl Hedin and Woody.

Faisal Butt, Founder and Managing Partner at Pi Labs, said:

“Innovation plays a role in tackling emissions at every touch point in the global construction lifecycle, and the logistics supply chain and transportation of construction materials has been hugely overlooked until now. As a fifth of construction's Co2 emissions come from moving materials to and from sites, we see the global potential for an efficient, unified system to tackle fleet-wide transportation emissions, under the leadership of two seasoned operators like Nici and Axel.”

Nici Sundén-Cullberg, Founder and CEO of Alrik, commented:

“Construction sites across Europe continue to grapple with uncertain lead times for materials from a countless number of suppliers and distributors, which hinders their progress. The distributors also need to manage their own logistics network, with a bulk of this still being done over manual phone calls, hand-written records and whiteboards. The lack of coordination leads to poor supply chain visibility, expensive fleet operations and stalled projects on the client side. Alrik effectively eliminates manual coordination with, in many cases, 100 different suppliers and distributors, and unifies the entire supply chain network to deliver projects more efficiently.”