Mutu highlighted on Stuff – SME owners growing their businesses
March 16, 2025
Mutu has been featured in a recent Stuff article titled “Audacity and Hustle: How Four SME Owners Are Growing Their Businesses.” This piece highlights the journeys of four small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) owners, including our story, showcasing the determination and innovative strategies propelling each business forward.
You can read the extract on Mutu below or the full article here.
Key takeaways
- Mutu featured on Stuff for SME growth and innovation
- Construction companies are achieving procurement cost savings
- Resource management across sites improves efficiency
- Surplus materials are reused instead of repurchased
- Cost savings and sustainability benefits go hand in hand
Mutu: learning how to sell is about finding out what resonates
For construction tech startup founder Ben Redwood, after launching his business Mutu, in March 2022, he believes 2025 will be his biggest year yet. Mutu helps large construction companies achieve construction procurement cost savings across multiple sites with their internal resource management, aiming to reduce waste and encourage a circular economy.
Mutu has a SaaS business model and the entrepreneur targets construction companies with 50 plus staff and five sites or more, accumulating a 45 (and growing) client list to date.
The Mutu app (Mutu is Latin for borrow, lend or share) has redirected more than 800 tonnes of surplus materials back into other projects and saved customers more than $1.5 million in procurement costs by avoiding buying things they already had, says Redwood.
It has also helped to avoid 120 tonnes of CO2 emissions by not sending materials to landfill, he adds.
“With the landscape of construction rapidly changing, one of our core benefits is the waste data we can provide,” explains Redwood, who has a PhD in mechanical engineering.
By year end April 2026, the Mutu founder wants to have doubled his customer base and to have increased revenue by 140%. There are 1400 construction companies in the country, 450 of them with 50 staff and five plus sites, says the Mutu founder.
Redwood also wants to double his Auckland-based team – he’d like to bring in someone to manage the customer side of things, a product manager, another sales person and possibly someone in digital marketing.
The plan is also to expand to Australia – major new NZ customer, Downer, has 700 sites across Australasia.
“I’ve been clear with Downer that I’ve got pretty audacious plans over there,” says the entrepreneur.
Redwood is actively promoting Mutu to the closeknit construction industry.
“I have found one of the most impactful ways to get sales moving is to get out, sponsor events, attend association meetings and shake hands with people,” says the founder.
The key part in learning how to sell, is finding out what resonates, he adds.
And while sustainability has become less of a priority in the current government, he’s been promoting Mutu as a procurement cost saving tool.
“In this really tough market some customers are saving $60,000 a month in procurement costs by sharing resources. That’s a staff member’s salary a month,” says Redwood.
*the above text was copied from stuff.co.nz and was authored by Gill South
Interested in seeing how much your company could save? Visit checkmutu.com and start sharing today.