As you may have noticed, Rishi Sunak is in the middle of a leadership election at the moment: and when he was asked on the hustings how the Conservative Government could improve its (frankly dismal) record on housing, he reached instinctively for the future…he reached for Modular Construction. Because, as a smart lad from Southampton, with ancestral roots deep in Punjab, Rishi clearly knows a thing or two about practical politics: he understands the unique potential modular technologies have to address a global housing and homelessness crisis: and whatever the outcome of this little local election in the UK might be, it’s a lesson a few more politicians would do well to mug up on.
Because we need to learn how to build smarter and faster, to address the burgeoning needs of homeless and near homeless fellow citizens across the Planet: to help those who will find only a cold pavement for respite at the end of another shiftless day, as well as those drifting aimlessly, night by night, from sofa to sofa, with no certainty of when, or if, they will ever have a home of their own. 150 million people are homeless worldwide today, and 227,000 of them are right now in the UK (www.shelter.org.uk), which, let us remind ourselves, is the fifth richest country on earth. So it’s time to do something about it…it’s time to pay more attention to what Modular Construction can do to shape a better future.
As an innovative amalgam of construction and manufacturing, Modular Technologies prefabricate units off-site so as to deliver twice as fast and 30% more profitably than their dinosaur counterparts, which makes them uniquely well placed to deliver sustainable solutions for that better future: bringing together Building Information Modelling and Augmented Reality to reduce costs, minimise waste and deliver new homes when and where they’re needed most.
And, of course, all this has to be paid for, too: something that’s especially close to Rishi Sunak’s heart, but here too, he could do worse than take a lesson from what’s happening in his ancestral homeland at the moment.
Over the last twelve months, private equity investment in PropTech Projects on the Subcontinent has increased by 35% (to a record $741 Million), and that comes on the back of a base PE inflow of $3.2 Billion into property technologies over the two years from 2009 to 2021 (www.housing.com), as well as 55% CAGR growth among Indian PropTech companies since 2010. It’s an object lesson in how the private sector can respond positively to macroeconomic needs.
And that’s a lesson we might all take careful note of too…
The rapid growth of private equity investment into India’s PropTech companies over recent years has been striking, to say the least: and it’s an object lesson in how the private sector and state agencies can work together to build a better future.
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