Maximl eyes global expansion to 20 countries, plans to raise over $10 mn

Firm says it is India's first connected worker platform for deskless workers, has expanded the past two years; clientele includes Tata Steel, RIL, BPCL and HPCL

Maximl, a Chennai-based startup that provides technology solutions to industries that empower deskless workers, is looking to expand to over a hundred global sites and over 20 countries by the end of this financial year, fueled by what it expects to be an 8 times growth from pre-Covid levels.

The firm counts big names such as Tata Steel, Reliance Industries, Bharat Petroleum, Hindustan Petroleum, Bharat Oman Refinery Limited, CPCL Refinery customers.

The company describes itself as India’s first connected worker platform for deskless workers, has expanded during the last two years.

"We expect to be live at over 100 global sites across over 20 countries by the end of this financial year. This is fuelled by both internal and external factors. Firstly, the demand for digitalisation to drive essential tasks and operational excellence has accelerated due to Covid-19. Further, the no-code capabilities of our product allow us to rapidly scale to more use cases and industries with templatized solutions that make it faster for enterprises to derive value from digitalisation. We plan to execute almost 70 per cent of all turnaround digitalization in the Indian refining sector in this financial year," said Pankaj Pawan, co-founder and CEO, Maximl.

Maximl plans to go deeper in LatAm, Europe, and South East Asia through its partner network while actively building capacity on the sales and marketing front for a greater presence in the US and Indian markets.

The firm is currently present at over 50 global sites with 16 enterprise customers across India, South East Asia, Latin America, and Europe. These deals come from both direct and indirect channels.

Maximl has raised $1.5 million in a pre-series A round from Nexus Venture Partners and Axilor Ventures. It is also backed by the BPCL startup fund under the Startup India programme. "We are also eyeing to raise more than $10 million in the coming months," said Pawan.  

Over the course of the last 18 months it has expanded from oil and gas, steel and petrochemicals to new sectors such as consumer packaged goods, chemicals, power and utilities, industrial EPC, warehousing and agrisciences.

As it expands to different regions, said Pawan, Maximl has to ensure it is in compliance with local laws. "We spend a significant amount of time ensuring Maximl has all the required certifications including GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation, SOC2 (Service Orgnaisation Control 2), ISO (International Organization for Standardization) etc. in place. Information security and privacy is a top priority qualifier to work with global enterprises and ensure that we build trust and ease of doing business," he added.

It also made changes to ensure it becomes multilingual and is now available in ten global languages.

In June, the firm announced a $1 million contract with Indian Oil Corporation Ltd (IOCL), to digitalize last-mile operations in refineries for turnaround maintenance. The contract is for two years across all of IOCL's nine refineries.

"We have been growing 2X steadily over the last few years, working very closely with our clients to innovate on how we can help them bring technology to the last mile. With the lockdown and Covid impact, last year was tough for all of us and our clients. Together as a team, we focussed a lot on innovation and strengthening our platform and made some significant changes. We were able to launch globally and are looking at 8x growth this financial year from our pre-Covid level, this has been due to us being able to cater to more industries and the increase in demand due to Covid impact," Pawan added.

The scope is immense, given the fact that most companies still use written format (paper or digital) and classroom video to train their workforce. As many as 75 per cent employers still find the most effective method to be on-the-floor (pairing) where an expert supervisor (who has tribal knowledge) trains the new recruits.

This will no longer be an option as the people with tribal knowledge are retiring and it is expected that by 2025, 75 per cent of the workforce will be millennials.

The people on the floor lack access to these job instructions since these are available in paper-based formats and are difficult to consume. As part of job completion, they often have to go back and fill the compliances in checklists and create manual reports.

"Our platform enables a modern, digital collaborative experience for the workforce," said Pawan. "Process Experts or knowledge experts can seamlessly author rich interactive standard operating procedures and work instructions (which was earlier done in word/paper) using pictures, videos, adding intelligence, and have the ability to share them with the workforce at the click of a button. The workforce can access them through the use of mobility devices on- field when they need to, they no longer have to carry paper binders, diagrams on- field and can access these instructions on-field," he added.