Accelerator The Invention Lab said on the 4th that it co-led a seed investment in the first corporate venture to spin off from HDC Group, where The Invention Lab serves as a corporate venture operator. The investment amount was not disclosed.
WorksMate Co., Ltd. is HDC Group’s first spun-off corporate venture. It provides “Gada,” a service that directly connects construction companies with the day laborers they need, remotely.
Until now, construction sites have hired day laborers through traditional offline labor offices and employment agencies, paying high fees. But site managers have had no systematic way to track which day laborers and skilled workers are assigned to their sites, while workers have grown increasingly dissatisfied with the high fees charged by labor offices.
Day laborers, in particular, have faced a major information imbalance, relying on labor brokers to find out which construction companies have work available. They have also had to go to labor markets early every morning.
With WorksMate’s Gada, more than 20 partner construction companies, including specialty contractors, post job information directly. The app then delivers those listings to registered day laborers, who can check, accept and confirm jobs right away.
WorksMate CEO Kim Se-won said, “We aim to introduce a new process to the market, like Airbnb, in which construction companies can hire day laborers directly, replacing the traditional system that relies on labor offices and markets without data infrastructure.” He added that the company plans to expand rapidly through a strategic partnership with Kim Sojang, a service that has signed agreements with more than 60 specialty contractors and has over 30,000 registered day laborers.
Kim Jin-young, CEO of The Invention Lab, which was selected to lead HDC Group’s corporate venture development program and joined the seed investment, said, “Several mobile apps have matched day laborers at construction sites with labor offices and provided workers with job information, but no service has directly connected construction companies and day laborers.” He added, “WorksMate’s Gada has a model that can grow quickly in a short time by securing a large volume of construction-site jobs.”
The Invention Lab has also completed the formation of a proptech technology investment fund involving construction industry experts. Following this seed investment, it plans to make a follow-on Pre-Series A investment in WorksMate within the year.
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