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Construction is a key industry across the world, representing approximately 13% of worldwide GDP or roughly $10 trillion in annual spend on construction-related goods and services. The sector employs over 7% of the world’s working population. Despite its relevance, the industry has struggled to evolve its approaches, and its productivity has suffered as a result. In fact, construction is one of the only industries that has experienced productivity losses over the last several decades.  One of key reasons for the construction’s productivity losses is the industry’s lack of investment in research & development (“R&D”) – resulting in stagnating innovation, even while the complexity of buildings and customer demands have increased.

However, this “R&D gap” is in the early-stages of being filled by the venture capital and startup ecosystem, seeking to build a new generation of technology-forward companies for one of the largest industries on the planet. Many see 2018 as the inflection point for the construction tech sector, as investor momentum continues to build, including 324% annual growth to nearly $3.1 billion in 2018 compared to $731 million in 2017, according to Crunchbase. Important startups such as Katerra (Navitas portfolio company), View Glass (Navitas portfolio company), PlanGrid (Navitas portfolio company), and Procore have raised hundreds of millions of dollars from prominent global investors seeing the large opportunity to build a more digitized, connected, and efficient industry.

As an early-stage VC firm focused on real estate and construction technology, Navitas offers a unique perspective on both the future of construction technology, as well as direct feedback from the “front lines” of startup activity in the space.

About Navitas Capital Navitas Capital is a California based venture capital firm focused on early-stage technology investments for the real estate and construction industries. Navitas’ investment strategy is to provide a combination of growth capital, industry expertise, and market access to high growth technology companies. Navitas tests and deploys technology solutions across its own portfolio of real estate assets, as well as helps startups scale through providing access to Navitas’ network of industry-leading LPs. Navitas is currently investing out of its second fund, a $60M vehicle that includes anchor strategic commitments from many industry leading LPs. Current and past real estate technology investments include: Katerra, PlanGrid (Autodesk), Cherre, HQO, Aquicore, Matterport, Gridium, View, Honest Buildings, Truss, Bowery, Harbor, PeerStreet, HappyCo., Ravti, Sweeten, Comfy (Siemens) and Can2Go (Schneider Electric).