Kiilto Ventures invests in Asumma, an ecological CLT housing startup

LEMPÄÄLÄ, Finland, March 14, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Kiilto Ventures leads equity investment in Asumma, a Finnish startup that designs and sells high-quality, move-in-ready single-family homes. Asumma's asset-light, virtual-factory model focuses on automation, sustainability, and resilient supply-chain management. Their custom, eco-friendly houses range from 20m² to 200m², with CLT house structures assembled in 2-3 days onsite.

Kiilto Venture's investment is helping power Asumma's growth in the Finnish single-family home market, semi-automate its CLT house architecture and engineering, and further develop the tech behind its platform approach to home construction. Within the next 2 years, Asumma aims to scale high-quality house delivery across Europe.

"The team at Asumma is exceptional and ambitious. With increased funding, they will ramp-up go-to-market activity and house product delivery here in Finland," says Head of Kiilto Ventures Ville Solja. "They will also double-down on their house-construction tech stack — an innovative, asset-light solution for managing high-volume CLT house design and delivery." 

Scaling ecological house construction across Europe

Asumma homes are designed with FSC-certified CLT, prefabricated massive-wood boards formed by gluing perpendicular layers of timber. In addition to being a renewable construction material, CLT enables complete digital control of house design, innovative architecture, precision manufacturing, and speedy 2-3 day CLT house structure and roof assembly.

"Our mission is to make high-quality, sustainable housing affordable for everyone," says Asumma CEO Martti Mela. "Healthy, stable societies require a strong middle-class comprised of homeowners. And our collective future hinges on pushing the construction industry toward more sustainable practices. Our goal is to produce the most architecturally-stunning CLT house product available in Europe — while serving as a global beacon for Finnish environmental values."

Asumma combines parametric design and building information modeling (BIM) to generate custom house designs more efficiently than traditional architecture and engineering firms. The company's platform approach to home construction supports a resilient supply-chain of vetted suppliers and contractors, who ensure the manufacture, assembly, and construction of Asumma homes. This approach increases transparency, oversight, and quality control for Asumma's customers, including both homebuyers and property developers. 

Helping people access high-quality, sustainable homes

Pekka Airaxin, Asumma's Chief Architect and previously member of a Finlandia Prize for Architecture-winning design team, says, "Our long-term work to parametrize our design process means that we can create ever-more designs that are as efficient as they are flexible to people's needs. And, in time, this will enable Asumma to make more homes affordable to larger numbers of people — not just producing a volume of housing, but more so creating housing that enables people to live in homes that elevate their day-to-day lives."

Kiilto Ventures is the corporate VC of Kiilto, a Finnish family-owned company aiming to be an environmental leader. Kiilto Ventures was born in 2019 to personify the same startup spirit as its parent company, which was founded over 100 years ago. Now Kiilto Ventures is building and funding early-stage ventures through Discovery, Incubation, and Investment activities, further boosted by its curious and daring entrepreneurial network, Kiilto's professional experience, and science-backed innovation. www.kiiltoventures.fi www.kiilto.com

Asumma designs and delivers high-quality homes built from CLT massive wood. The company's aim is to make high-quality, sustainable homes affordable for everyone by productizing housing with technology. Co-founded in Finland in 2021, Asumma is the winner of the World of Digital Built Environment Award for Best Digital Project Delivery. The team is passionate about sustainability, transforming the future of prefab, and residential development. The company is led by Martti Mela (CEO), a twice-patented inventor previously at Nokia; Pekka Airaxin (Chief Architect), previously a member of the 2021 Finlandia Prize for Architecture-winning design team; and Vitali Balajevs (CPO), an RICS-accredited product leader previously at a property technology startup with over €5M in funding. The company currently operates across Finland, with European expansion on its sight line. www.asumma.com

More information:

Ville Solja
Chief Business Development Officer
Kiilto
ville.solja@kiilto.com
+358 50 329 5211

Martti Mela 
CEO and Co-founder
Asumma Group Ltd
martti@asumma.com
+358 45 347 7844

CONTACT:

Kiilto / communication 
communications@kiilto.com

https://www.kiilto.com/kiilto/for-media/

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