Planera Secures $13.5M to Disrupt Scheduling & Planning Market

San Jose, CA August 27, 2024 – Planera, a construction CPM scheduling and planning solution, today announced that it has raised $13.5 million in a Series A funding round led by Sierra Ventures, with participation from Sorenson Capital, Brick and Mortar Ventures, Prudence VC and Firebolt Ventures. The funding will enable Planera to accelerate the development and deployment of its innovative, collaborative, and visual planning tools, addressing the growing needs of general contractors (GCs), specialty subcontractors, and the wider construction sector.

Traditionally, GCs have relied on a couple of legacy software systems for managing commercial construction projects. These platforms have become outdated and miss the critical shifts to the Cloud, Lean construction methodologies, and AI advancements. They also fall short of offering collaborative features and the visual elements essential for visual thinkers in the construction industry. This has created a significant gap in the market, one that Planera is uniquely positioned to fill.

The construction project management industry is undergoing a paradigm shift similar to the IT sector’s move from Waterfall to Lean methodologies. This shift from on-premises to Cloud-based intelligent applications, multiplayer collaboration, and visual planning has set the stage for Planera’s success.

"This funding milestone brings us closer to our vision of empowering teams with the technology they need to plan, schedule, and collaborate more effectively to deliver optimal outcomes for complex construction projects," said Nitin Bhandari, CEO and co-founder of Planera. "We're seeing strong demand for long term as well as weekly planning tools, and we are heavily investing in more advanced features like quality checks, performance analytics and construction-specific AI to better anticipate and manage unexpected project challenges. This oversubscribed Series A funding will allow us to accelerate product development, expand sales and marketing efforts, and expand our reach within the construction industry.”

Bhandari is a serial entrepreneur with two successful exits. This is his third startup, and he is joined by CTO Erik Swenson, his co-founder from their previous venture, bringing over 15 years of collaboration experience. They are joined by Saif Lodhi who has 30+ years of construction experience.

“Planera's innovative approach to leveraging SaaS in the construction industry is a testament to the transformative power of intelligent applications,” said Shashank Saxena, managing partner at Sierra Ventures. “The industry is ripe for disruption with the shift towards collaborative, cloud-based, and visually-driven solutions. Planera’s team has the proven expertise and vision to lead this change and deliver immense value to general contractors.”

“The construction industry can drive better project outcomes only if the entire project team participates in creating, maintaining, and optimizing project schedules and plans on an ongoing basis,” said Troy Thompson, COO at Big-D Construction, one of the construction industry’s top 50 GCs. “Planera is the only platform that has allowed us to move our teams in that direction.”

"Planera is the only company that has successfully challenged the incumbents and gained impressive early traction in the project planning software space,” said Kaustubh Pandya, Partner, Brick and Mortar. “The company’s innovative solution, customer-centric approach, and world-class team make them poised for explosive growth.”

About Planera

‍At Planera, we believe that when all project stakeholders collaborate to create a high-quality schedule and plan, that results in better team alignment leading to higher margins and better workplace safety. Planera is a full CPM-based scheduling and planning platform for the construction industry. With an innovative multi-level whiteboard, Planera enables all stakeholders to create, review, and optimize schedules. Planera addresses scheduling needs in all three phases: pursuit, pre-construction, and project execution. Advanced features like built-in schedule quality audit, real-time progress tracking  and Monte Carlo risk simulation set Planera apart from other legacy CPM scheduling software.