The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic continues to unfold globally. While time will tell the absolute impact on the real estate industry, one thing can be said surely that the pandemic pushed the construction industry towards digital adoption. Hitherto, the real estate industry ran with limited resources, paper based contracts, inadequate performance management and weak supply chain practices. With everything going digital, the pandemic presented an opportunity to the construction industry to identify synergies between real estate and technology.
Today, the need for technology in real estate is greater than it’s ever been. The technology enables realtors to improve almost any decision they face while also ensuring greater process efficiency, accuracy and reliability. New-age tech has helped build platforms that reduce the need for in-person meetings, provide real-time data, digitise paperwork and offer integrated end-to-end solutions that facilitate transactions quicker and smoother.
Real estate sector in India is expected to reach US$ 1 trillion by 2030. 2020 was the year of technological growth and every sector witnessed the adoption of digital tools. As per a report by Savills India, PE investment in the Indian real estate sector may recover and garner inwards flow to the tune of $6 billion in 2021, up 30% YoY. This is mainly on account of improved economic sentiment, government initiatives and niche value proposition of construction-tech startups. Many start-ups have upped their game to deliver tech based solutions for construction/property to better suit the need of the hour. With the recent boom in construction technology, these start-ups have the power to change the industry.
Below are some start-ups to watch in this space as we approach 2021:
- Brick&Bolt, India’s number one tech-enabled construction company that uses technology to put trust, transparency and predictability in the construction space. It solves the most pressing issues prevalent in house construction like cost overruns, contractor delays and facilitating payments. Brick&Bolt ensures accountability at every step of construction – from procuring materials, project execution, timely delivery and taking complete ownership of the entire project timeline.
- Infra.Market, a technology firm providing a one-stop marketplace for construction materials. Infra. Market is a procurement marketplace that leverages technology to provide procurement experience for all players in the construction ecosystem. They are digitally transforming the highly inefficient construction materials supply chain in India by aggregating the capacity of small manufacturers and adding our cutting-edge technology and services stack.
- Tracecost, a cloud-based automated project management solution helps stakeholders to ensure faster delivery of projects. Tracecost helps in facilitating project managers and contractors to take to technology and data science to manage construction projects. Its expertise in cloud-based project management solutions helps a construction project’s stakeholders, such as the engineers and contractors, get updates from the team, generate key reports, and raise triggers and alerts when problems are detected.
- Homes247.in is a portal catering to the end-to-end needs of modern-day home seekers. The company provides a real estate search site that displays a visual map of available housing for rent or sale. The company uses the latest web technologies to ensure a smooth and safe experience and is continuously evolving with its robust backend analytics represented in the simplest user-friendly way to the customer.
As we move forward, India’s real estate sector will continue to attract interest of occupiers and investors alike. The technology adoption and innovation is seeing strong upward growth and the sector is ripe for disruption. With emerging new technologies, we are bound to see a new wave of tech-based construction and real estate solutions that will render the old system & processes redundant. This rapid development will help in delivering fast, transparent and superior experiences and will reduce the opaqueness in the industry, thereby leading to a rise in productivity.
