KloudGin Lands $8M Series A To Connect Field Workers, Assets

KloudGin has raised its first round of venture capital, a $8.2 million Series A funding round from Cloud Apps Capital Partners. The startup provides artificial intelligence, cloud-based field service and asset management tools to workers in the field.

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The Sunnyvale, California-based company was started in 2014 by a group of former Oracle executives, including CEO Vikram Takru, to focus on last-mile field worker productivity and end-customer engagement, connecting customers, employees and assets on one platform.

While at Oracle, the KloudGin founders learned that companies hate using software.

They found most were built for white-collar workers, as opposed to the 90 percent of workers who are out in the field and not as tech savvy, Takru told Crunchbase News.

“We knew that if we focused our platform on field workers, and we could solve the problem for them, we could do it for anyone,” he said.

The new funding will be used to accelerate the company’s growth and support digital transformation and customer experience in verticals such as energy and utilities, telecom, oil and gas, manufacturing, and other industrial and commercial service markets. KloudGin also plans to add about 20 staff members to its already 150-person workforce, Takru said.

What investors are saying

As part of the investment, Andy Stinnes, venture partner of Cloud Apps Capital Partners, will join KloudGin’s board of directors. In an interview, he said his firm focuses on leading Series A investments for startups developing cloud-building operations.

Cloud Apps Capital Partners was an early investor in ServiceMax, a provider of field service management software for equipment manufacturers and service providers. Stinnes said field service and enterprise asset management used to be two separate categories, and that the industry was looking for a mobile-first, modern tool. KloudGin is one of the few combining the two.

“This is a space that we know well,” he said. “The industry is looking for a true cloud leader to build for blue-collar workers and combine these elements. We saw KloudGin actively integrating those tools, saw their growth last year and knew it was the right time to invest to take advantage of the opportunity.”

Next steps for KloudGin

KloudGin is working within a large market that is eager for innovation, Takru said.

We’ve covered quite a few companies this year that raised money for tools targeting workers in the field and front lines:

• Poka, a Quebec-based connected worker platform built specifically for manufacturers, raised $4.7 million in a new investment last month.
• Also in June, Urbint, an AI company for infrastructure and utility safety, secured $20 million in Series B funding.
• Beekeeper, a communication and operations platform designed specifically for frontline workers added a $10 million extension to its Series B earlier this month.
• Orion Labs, providing automated communications for deskless and frontline workers, raised $29 million in a Series B round of funding in March.

Now that KloudGin has built its product, Takru said the next step is to scale it.

“It is all about the execution, building the right culture, as well as customer experience and efficiency,” he said. “In this environment, all of the utility companies will be changing their business models.”

Illustration: Li-Anne Dias