US & Canada

Infrastructure and Built Environment

• Year founded: 2017
• Funding total and latest funding round: Seed, $2.3 million (August 2021)
• Revenue growth from 2020 to 2021: x10
• Lead investor: Urban Innovation Fund
• Offices (HQs): New York, USA
• FTEs = 3
• Key clients/partners: NYC HDC, Hacienda CDC, Xenolith Partners LLC.
• Key executives:
  • Kanan Ajmera, CEO and founder
  • Uma Pandit, Head of Product Experience and co-founder

Many developed nations are facing affordable housing crises in their cities. Decades of housing construction that lagged behind population growth, followed by reductions in housing stock since 2016, placed the US in a particularly bad position pre-pandemic. Since 2020, changes in housing preferences and disruptions to supply chains have further reduced stock and driven up prices. Policy experts agree that simply building more housing will not solve the crisis – amongst other changes, the cost of construction must come down. Government agencies must work with developers and suppliers to reduce housing development-related costs.

Builders Patch increases efficiencies in housing development by modernising the financing process for community developers and government authorities, ultimately bringing down the time and costs involved. Builders Patch is a secure, cloud-based platform that facilitates management of multi-family housing deals from acquisition to asset management using automated processes. Currently, the platform is primed for automating due diligence collection, underwriting, and loan approval for lenders and multifamily developers. In 2021, Builders Patch partnered with the New York City Housing Development Corporation, the largest municipal Housing Finance Agency in the USA, to manage loan proposals for the City’s affordable housing projects and to collect the associated due diligence.

While affordable housing didn’t make the final version of the bipartisan US Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, it remains a key component of the Biden administration’s plan to ‘Build Back Better’. Innovative platforms, such as Builders Patch, that automate housing finance processes can lead to higher returns on government investment, aiding the necessary development of millions more affordable homes.

Expanding the Builders Patch team and the platform to serve more users.

Private organisations and public institutions responsible for or involved in housing finance.