It might not be the sexiest of subjects, but facilities management is central to any business that has a physical premises — the bigger that footprint becomes, the more complex it gets.
Portuguese startup Infraspeak has set out to address that with an all-in-one platform that gives facility managers and associated service providers insights and operational control over everything that goes on in a given location.
Founded in 2015, Infraspeak has hitherto raised around $20 million in funding and secured big-name customers such as KFC, InterContinental, and Primark. And to drive its next phase of growth, the Porto-based startup on Monday said it has raised a further €18 million ($19.5 million) in Series B funding.
Many moving parts
Consider a healthcare firm with myriad departments, equipment, and contractors spanning various disciplines such as maintenance and cleaning — a lot needs to be coordinated and managed.
“Managing all these moving parts is challenging, and the stakes are quite high,” Infraspeak’s co-founder and CEO, Felipe Ávila da Costa, told TechCrunch. “They [facility managers] must track everything from preventive maintenance schedules to work orders, cleaning tasks, contractor communication, air quality management, service level agreements, room preparation, and performance reporting — all while ensuring compliance with health and safety standards.”
Of course, companies have managed all this for a long time before the digital era, but the task still required significant manual processes and disjointed systems that were prone to human error. Even in more recent times, companies could combine spreadsheets and disparate software designed for specific tasks.
This gets to the crux of what Infraspeak is building: a centralized conduit that joins the dots between systems and processes, allowing all stakeholders to collaborate in one place.
This is made possible with a shared workspace, dubbed Infraspeak Network. In addition to letting facility managers manage internal work such as building operations and connecting teams, the workspace also links directly to external service providers — letting managers request quotes from suppliers, on-board them, assign work orders, and track progress. Service providers, meanwhile, can use Infraspeak to send quotes, communicate with clients, share operational data, and more.
“As a collaborative facilities management platform, Infraspeak enables facilities teams to manage the entire operation cohesively — it allows facilities managers, staff, and contractors to collaborate in a shared digital workspace,” da Costa said. “Whether sharing real-time data, managing work orders, or tracking job execution, every stakeholder is connected, reducing miscommunication and bottlenecks.”
With the rise of remote work, it would be easy to assume that demand for technology to help manage commercial buildings might not be as high as it used to be. Ignoring the fact that many companies are demanding that workers return to their in-office desks, the truth is there are countless facilities that need management apart from office buildings — from shopping malls and hospitals to airports and factories.
“The remote work trend hasn’t significantly impacted our business,” da Costa said. “If anything, remote work has made cloud-based facilities management software more essential — it enables operational managers to control multiple facilities without being constantly on-site. And if we consider one of the main factors that drove the remote work trend in the first place (i.e., the pandemic), then the importance of this kind of software becomes even clearer, as it enables managing building occupancy, enforcing health and safety protocols, or adjusting cleaning schedules based on space usage.”
Complexities
Infraspeak competes with other startups such as MaintainX, UpKeep, and Facilio, which have all raised significant venture investment in recent years — indicating growing demand for better facilities management tooling. Da Costa also pointed to a number of factors that could be driving this demand, including the increasing complexity of managing buildings due to the fact that they now have more devices and data pouring through them than ever before.
In tandem, companies have come under increasing pressure to optimize operations to meet strict sustainability and ESG targets.
“Overall, buildings now tend to have more advanced systems, stricter regulations, large supplier networks, growing sustainability concerns, and pressure to be cost-efficient and transparent to building users,” da Costa said.
Infraspeak counts around 182 employees (or “Infraspeakers,” as it calls them) across offices in Porto, London, Barcelona, and Florianópolis, and some staff are based remotely elsewhere in South America and Europe. With the fresh $19.5 million in the bank, the company is planning to expand its headcount by a further 100 people in 2025, including C-level positions such as chief revenue officer.
Europe remains Infraspeak’s core focus for now, but the startup is also expanding into South America and Africa. Although the company doesn’t formally operate in the U.S. market, it does claim “a small number” of customers stateside, which could serve as the genesis for expansion later — it may well need to raise more money for that.
“We plan to raise our Series C by 2025, and entering and conquering the U.S. market will definitely be the plan by then,” da Costa said.
Infraspeak’s Series B round was led by Endeit Capital, with participation from Bright Pixel Capital, Caixa Capital, Innovation Nest, and Indico Capital Partners.