In our first ever Unearthing series, we had the privilege of speaking with Taquiddin Tamunif, one of the founders behind construction tech startup iConstruct. With a mission to digitise the otherwise traditional construction industry, iConstruct is a B2B marketplace that connects contractors to suppliers, creating a seamless process for both parties to buy and sell construction materials

Here’s how our chat with Taquiddin went as we discussed his foray into the construction tech industry, the role he plays and his plans for the industry.

First and foremost, congratulations on the ascent of iConstruct! It’s been quite a meteoric rise to say the least. However, I think some may be surprised to know that you used to head up another startup called StreamShop which was a live streaming e-commerce platform connecting brands and merchants directly to shoppers. Can you share the story of your personal pivot and the road that eventually led you to where you are today?

Thanks so much! It’s been a whirlwind, but we’ve got so much more to learn.

Looking back at my days of starting up my first ever company which was StreamShop, what I came to realise was that the problem we were looking to solve wasn’t quite big enough. Back in 2018-2019, there were many companies already entering and occupying the space including social media platforms and the bigger boys like Shopee and Lazada. At that point, it became a question of whether I wanted to compete as a small fish in a big pond, which is not what I wanted. Over time, I also felt that I didn’t quite suit the bill when it came to being a founder in that area, so I made the decision to walk away. Having said that, I do have to say that the market is growing and doing very well. It just wasn’t the space that I wanted to occupy.

I eventually went into the construction industry and began to share notes with my co-founder Hasif Ramli, who was already in the construction industry for a number of years as he owns a hardware store that sells construction materials. We quickly identified many problems and had ideas on solutions. It just became a very natural step for us to eventually tackle it head on by creating a platform of sorts that could solve the pain points that we had identified - and the rest is history.

What have been some of the biggest learnings from the failure of your first startup?

The most important lesson for me is to always validate your business model before putting in an obscene amount of money. Thankfully, at the time, I had the foresight to not invest too much as I wanted to be able to test the market of which I made use of free tools and spoke to hundreds of customers to better understand what they want. I have since taken those learnings with me when we chose to validate iConstruct’s business model. We leveraged platforms like Facebook and Whatsapp to better understand the demand by speaking to customers to try and understand what they wanted, their pain points and how we could resolve those. This included meetings with contractors, suppliers, partners and customers.

Going into a notoriously traditional industry with very little progress in digitalisation, what challenges did you face when it came to onboarding contractors and suppliers?

The biggest challenge was and still is trust. On the contractors side, most contractors are aged 45 years old and above and are not necessarily tech savvy. The concept of buying things online is still very foreign to them. In addition, seeing as we are an online marketplace, we don’t have any physical presence be it a store or a fleet of lorries. On the suppliers side, many are dependent on offline sales with zero online sales distribution. Many people just couldn’t understand the business. Understanding the gap in terms of knowledge, we’ve had to continuously educate our contractors and suppliers which ramped up during the first MCO.

When Covid19 hit, the construction industry was put on hold for the first couple of months of MCO. How did you survive during this period and what did you do to maintain relationships with your existing contractors, suppliers and investors?

Between March until May 2020, we had zero income. Given our very low overheads at the time including running a lean team, we had cash reserves that we could depend on which is a really important component of managing the finances of any business. Seeing as construction projects couldn’t happen during this period, we focused on building awareness of iConstruct through social media engagements including hosting online sharing sessions, content marketing via blog write ups and social media ads. This really helped us maintain our relationships with all involved parties, level up our brand awareness and encourage brand engagement.

How have you been marketing your platform? What have you discovered to work well based on your target audience?

Since we started, we’ve been purely focusing our marketing efforts towards running Facebook ads in order to generate leads of contractors and suppliers. This has proven to be incredibly effective for our target audience of small and independent contractors based in Klang Valley. Moving forward, we are looking to invest in various offline marketing efforts.

Since starting in July 2019, you've grown from a team of two to now seven people. What have been your biggest challenges in growing and managing a team?

Finding the right people to be part of our team. Skills are just one factor, the factor that matters most is attitude and someone who truly understands our company direction.

We understand that you're one half of the co-founding team of iConstruct. How did you and your co-founder meet and what are your backgrounds and specific roles?

Hasif and I are actually schoolmates turned best friends. Throughout our friendship, we’ve frequently shared business stories to inspire and motivate each other. We both went on to study engineering and work in the construction industry, and when we started sharing our stories from working in the industry, we realised that we were on to something.

Hasif spearheads the supply chain and recruitment of contractors whereas I lead the business development, investor relations and tech development efforts.

As one of the co-founders, what are the most important aspects that you look for in a co-founder?

Aligned thinking and trust. There’s no way any kind of working relationship could ever work without a full sense of trust.

Congrats on surpassing RM1 million in sales last month! What are your forecasts looking like for the coming year?

We’ve been steadily growing our revenue between 30-40% month of month with a target to hit RM 2 million in monthly revenue from March 2021 onwards. From 2022 onwards, we hope to be able to expedite the company’s growth through our investment in tech and marketing such that we can hit a 9 figure revenue come December 2022.

Where will you be placing your focus and efforts for 2021?

Our main focus for this year is on building our digital marketplace platform as we plan to digitise the supply chain. Other than that, we are also looking to grow our contractor database to 1,000 in the next 12 months.

What gets you out of bed in the morning?

The journey of building a business that I’m incredibly passionate about and making an impact in the construction industry. It’s been a heck of a ride and I can’t wait for the world to see what we’ll be up to over the next couple of months especially!

Where do you see yourself in 5-10 years?

In terms of my career, I’d like to be able to build iConstruct to become a regional player in the construction space.

Personally, my entrepreneurship journey has been filled with many life lessons that I hope to be able to share and give back to the startup community and other aspiring founders out there.

To continue its development, iConstruct is currently raising a round on licensed equity crowdfunding platform pitchIN. For more information on the investment offer and to invest in this high-growth potential startup, log onto https://equity.pitchin.my/businesses/stream-shop-sdn-bhd.