Aurigo is a company that provides modern and cloud-based solutions for capital infrastructure and private owners to help them plan with confidence, build with quality, and maintain their assets efficiently. With more than $300 billion of capital programs under management, Aurigo’s solutions are trusted by over 300 customers in transportation, water and utilities, healthcare, higher education, and government on over 40,000 projects across North America. Founded in 2003, Aurigo is a privately held U.S. corporation headquartered in Austin, Texas, with global offices in Canada and India. Pulse 2.0 interviewed Aurigo Software Technologies founder and CEO Balaji Sreenivasan to learn more.
Balaji Sreenivasan’s Background
Sreenivasan was around eight when he was introduced to tech and started programming (in Basic) on an 8-bit home computer (ZX Spectrum)! And Sreenivasan said:
“From there, I pursued mechanical engineering at the National Institute of Technology, Trichy, in India, before becoming a proud alumnus of the University of Florida and the Harvard Business School. While my background is in mechanical and aerospace engineering, I’ve developed a passionate interest in solving large business problems using enterprise software, blockchain, artificial intelligence, and machine learning technologies.”
Formation Of Aurigo Software
How did the idea for Aurigo Software come together? Sreenivasan shared:
“The idea for a new venture always starts by confronting a problem and looking for ways to solve it. If you want to build a successful business, you look at the most significant challenges facing communities and businesses, and you set about trying to solve those challenges in a way that’s scalable, accessible, and affordable.”
“In 2003, I founded Aurigo, sparked by a glaring inefficiency I observed in the construction industry. Despite its significance, the construction inspection process was predominantly manual, cumbersome, and ripe for modernization. Here we saw a community of businesses in a trillion-dollar market with a real problem, and we started designing solutions. I have always believed that If you want to build a billion-dollar business, you start by solving a trillion-dollar problem – that led Aurigo into the infrastructure space. We started the company with a single product that used technology to eliminate paper clipboards and capture real-time field data using a mobile device. As we delved deeper into the jobs that needed to be done by the various stakeholders of a construction project, our product suite naturally expanded to streamline the entire lifecycle.”
“Today, I’m proud to say Aurigo is an industry leader, ensuring infrastructure project owners can plan and execute their visions efficiently. We have over 550 employees, help plan and deliver over $400 billion in Infrastructure programs. Like Amazon, we share a “Day 1” culture at Aurigo, with a start-up mentality of excitement and ambition that fights challenges, embraces change, employs quick decision-making, and is customer-obsessed. It’s been an incredible journey from an entrepreneurial perspective – Each day, the sense of purpose is palpable — we’re not just running a business but helping build a better tomorrow.”
Favorite Memory
What has been your favorite memory working for Aurigo Software so far? Sreenivasan shared:
“In 2005, several states, including Louisiana and Oregon, were heavily impacted by Hurricane Katrina, with bridges and other infrastructure assets devastated. Oregon DOT needed to conduct massive bridge inspections on a scale they weren’t used to, and they needed technology to help accelerate that inspection process. They selected Aurigo’s technology in a multi-year contract worth over a million dollars – which was a big deal then. Being a part of that – helping an entire state solve a major infrastructure rebuild problem, and make a difference to so many people, is a moment when things became real for me. Even today, every customer win is a testimony to why we are in business.”
Challenges Faced
What are some of the challenges you face in building the company/ Has the current macroeconomic climate affected the company? Sreenivasan acknowledged:
“I think two of the most significant and exciting challenges we face right now as a company is scaling to new markets and leveraging artificial intelligence and machine learning to deliver more insights and expedite the entire implementation of enterprise software.”
“We’re in an exciting time now. The past decade has been about cloud software, and the next decade will be all about using AI and ML to draw down and process the data that the cloud software is collecting and make it work faster and harder. We are looking to AI to improve our operational efficiency and help our customers with better insights and decision-making capabilities.”
“For instance, it takes 6-9 months to implement the Aurigo Masterworks platform for our larger customers, mainly owing to our customers’ data migrations and integration requirements. One of the challenges we’re currently grappling with is how do we shrink that time down to just a couple of weeks using AI and automation. At the moment, Aurigo is focused on North America. We will enter international markets over the next 24 months with a channel-ready model.”
Core Products
What are Aurigo Software’s core products and features? Sreenivasan explained:
“Aurigo’s core products help owners of infrastructure projects streamline capital planning, construction management, and right of way.”
“The Aurigo platform is available at three key levels.
1.) Aurigo Essentials offers an all-in-one portfolio planning and project management solution for small–medium public agencies and independent projects that spend anywhere from $10M – $100M in annual construction spend. This is a true SaaS offering delivered on a multi-tenant hosted model.
2.) Aurigo Masterworks offers capital planning, federal aid reimbursement, construction management, and right-of-way software for large public agencies that spend $100M – $10B annually. This is our flagship suite and is highly configurable for our customers.
3.) Aurigo Enterprise targets private enterprises in retail, manufacturing, hospitality, and healthcare.”
Evolution Of Aurigo Software’s Technology
How has Aurigo Software’s technology evolved since launching? Sreenivasan noted:
“Exploring new technologies has always been part of Aurigo’s DNA. When we started the company, many of our competitors were providing client-server solutions, while we opted for a cloud- and mobile-first strategy from day one. We developed a lot of our software as Microsoft Gold and AWS-certified partners, although we are moving towards being more OS-independent as phone and tablet usage has become the norm. We’ve upgraded the way we manage security and development operations, becoming FedRAMP and StateRAMP compliant several years ago, which offers our customers the highest levels of reliability available.”
“We’ve also adopted microservice architecture and low-code/no-code technology so that our customers can easily configure our products according to their specific needs. Most recently, we’ve been using AI/ML technologies to help our customers gain richer insights from their public feedback process, investing in development of a technology stack that will cater to both public and private entities alike, and exploring drone technology for underwater inspections through a partnership with the University of Florida.”
Significant Milestones
What have been some of Aurigo Software’s most significant milestones? Sreenivasan cited:
— Raising Series A capital from our initial investors Sridhar Manthani, Sunil Nanda and Ravi Gulati in 2005
— Securing our first major paying customers with Oregon DOT, Pinellas County, City of Lincoln
— Expanding our Product stack to automate Capital Planning and Right of Way.
— Entering the DOT marketplace and winning around 10 State DOTs as customers
— Winning our largest Canadian customer – MTO, Ontario
— Winning federal contracts, including FHWA, and becoming FedRAMP-ready
— Winning Amtrak, America’s largest rail transit corporation
— Launching Aurigo Essentials for the smaller agency market
— Strategic Partnerships and Investment by Autodesk
— Launching Config+, our completely comprehensive configuration and self-help engine
— Getting channel ready
— Partnership with the University of Florida to build AI-powered underwater drones for bridge inspection
— Launching Aurigo Engage, leveraging AI tech stack to democratize public engagement
— Expanding operations and facilities in India and the US
Customer Success Stories
Upon asking about customer success stories, Sreenivasan cited:
“There are many to choose from, so I’ll outline one of the recent ones. Tampa Bay Water used a combination of Microsoft Project, Word, Excel, InfoPath, and SharePoint, along with a custom database application built by their in-house team in 2000. It was pretty cumbersome and inefficient. There was very little integration and manual data entry involved, so managing capital projects was overly complex and error-prone. They opted for the Aurigo Masterworks plan to tap into its capital planning, construction project management, document management, and mobile inspection functionalities. Now, they capture data, add project notes and upload files seamlessly, and have all their project details at their fingertips no matter where they are. The company has seen considerable improvements in the accuracy and consistency of field data collection. It has taken full advantage of the tracking and analysis capabilities and the cloud-based dashboard. They are responsible for 2.5 million residents in the Tampa Bay Region with a capital budget of $225 million – and it was our software that helped them streamline and optimize their project operations.”
Funding/Revenue
After asking Sreenivasan about funding and revenue, he revealed:
“I am happy to share that Aurigo is a highly profitable business, and we are growing year-over-year by over 45%. As a business, we have been very frugal and have always been customer-obsessed and not VC-obsessed. Usually, in the enterprise SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) space, founders align success with the number of capital financing rounds and the valuation they received every round without regard to maintaining ownership, realizing profitability and building a sustainable business that is not dependent on external subsidies from VCs. We never did that. We bootstrapped the business with very little money and had a couple of initial funding rounds from a close set of investors but stopped raising funds in 2005.”
“For the last five years, we’ve enjoyed 40% year-on-year growth and have positive cash flow – so we do not need external capital and are now a self-sustaining business.”
“Most of our contracts are subscription-based deals with sovereign government agencies, so they aren’t going anywhere. We are heads down building the business and constantly fielding requests for meetings with investors and PE firms.”
Total Addressable Market
What total addressable market (TAM) size is Aurigo Software pursuing? Sreenivasan assessed:
“The construction market is made up of owners and contractors. While the contractor market is crowded, Aurigo has always focused on Owners. Our total addressable market is currently very healthy and is about to hit the $10 billion mark in the US alone. This comprises large public agencies such as state departments, ports, railways, airports, and other areas that fall under federal jurisdiction – they typically spend upwards of $100 million annually.”
“Then there are small public-owned agencies, like smaller cities, counties, municipalities, and special districts, with an average capital spend of $10 million annually. Then, of course, there are enterprises and Fortune 2000 companies in technology, retail, healthcare, and hospitality. Within this segment, we only focus on owners who spend an average of $75 million on capital planning and rolling out new projects.”
Differentiation From The Competition
What differentiates Aurigo Software from its competition? Sreenivasan affirmed:
“Aurigo’s fundamental differentiator is that we streamline the entire lifecycle of construction from capital planning, construction management, and right of way with an exclusive focus on owners of capital projects.”
“A lot of time is consumed on implementing enterprise software, and vendors end up customizing software products for each customer. Our highly configurable platform ships with Config+ a self-serve model. This makes for less legacy infrastructure that can be easily upgraded and integrated with other systems.”
“Finally, our investment in AI is unparalleled. From using time-forecasting analytics powered by open-source LLMS to make better predictions of construction cashflow to using NLP to gather public sentiment on an upcoming capital project, Aurigo is ahead of the competition by a mile.”
“Finally, customer success and adoption is a big reason Aurigo’s customers stay with the business, and we have a very low attrition rate. We take customer feedback and NPS (net Promoter Scores) very seriously and measure performance based on these metrics.”
Future Company Goals
What are some of Aurigo Software’s future company goals? Sreenivasan pointed out:
“Aurigo’s goal is to democratize capital planning and construction management and make our technology accessible to any capital project owner worldwide who spends over $10M annually. So they can plan with confidence and build with quality. Our immediate three-year goal is to expand our customer base to include smaller agencies in America via a channel strategy (currently underway) and expand internationally.”
Additional Topics
Any other topics to discuss? Sreenivasan concluded:
“America is currently undergoing the most significant investment in public infrastructure since the 1920s. The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) has promised $1.2 trillion in funding for various infrastructure projects, including transportation, water systems, broadband, energy, transportation – you name it. This investment must be handled correctly, and that goals around capital planning are trackable, transparent, and easy to communicate with various stakeholders. Aurigo is more than capable of serving that need, particularly with the advent of drone technology and the improvements in AI-driven analytics and forecasting.”
