Indian startup makes software for factory workers, eyes Southeast Asia next

Things did not seem too rosy for Maximl, an Indian startup that allows factory workers to interact digitally during plant upgrades, when a nationwide lockdown was enforced in 2020 amid the first signs of Covid-19. The company lost out on significant revenue when factories were forced to pause operations as cases ticked up.

Just before the pandemic began having an outsized impact on India last year, the January to March period had been Maximl’s best-ever quarter. At the time, the startup offered only a few solutions to manufacturers, unlike the single-suite service it now provides. While the company had confirmed orders lined up for delivery in the following quarter, they were put on hold as soon as the lockdown was announced.

This pushed Maximl into a corner, forcing it to go back to the drawing board.

A worker using the Maximl platform in a factory / Photo credit: Maximl

That’s when the Maximl team launched its Connected Worker platform, which the company touts as a one-stop solution to manage important workflows in a factory, including maintenance, operations, and quality.

The startup now follows a cookie-cutter model that allows a factory’s management to use a single template to create a customized framework to suit their requirements. Maximl is building a library of such templates for various sectors such as steel, pharmaceuticals, and fast-moving consumer goods.

As the situation began improving after the first Covid-19 wave in September last year, factory-owning companies in India wised up to the role of digitalization in improving cost efficiency. Orders soon started flowing in for Maximl, and it witnessed an 8x jump in revenue from pre-Covid levels.

Despite the pandemic, it entered the Singapore market last year. Maximl brought on board its first customer in the city-state – Singapore Refining Company – remotely via Zoom calls. The startup is also looking to expand to the rest of Southeast Asia, especially Thailand and Malaysia.

See also: How CXA’s big SaaS bet paid off during Covid-19

Having already raised US$1.5 million in seed money from marquee investors like Nexus Venture Partners and Axilor Ventures, Maximl is now planning a series A funding round.

A source told Tech in Asia that the company is targeting to raise between US$10 million to US$15 million in a series A round by the quarter ending March 2022.

The company has so far focused on addressing issues faced by relatively large companies, but it is looking to serve mid-market firms as well. “We can crack them even faster as they are in need of a template plug-and-play solution that can solve their problems,” Manish Arora, Maximl’s co-founder and chief operating officer told Tech in Asia.

Forging a solution

In April 2020, Numaligarh Refinery was shut down for a revamp aimed at boosting its capacity.

Located in the Indian state of Assam, the refinery was burdened with the mammoth task of providing and maintaining paper-based checklists to over 250 workers from multiple departments during the turnaround procedure, which requires manufacturing companies to temporarily shut a factory down for maintenance and upgrading.