Building ecosystems for LatAm construction tech?

Digital transformation has disrupted many sectors, but construction isn’t one of them. At least not yet, and there are a number of startups trying to become the first to pull it off.

But the sector, especially in developing regions like Latin America, has a plethora of problems that need addressing. Infrastructure lags the needs of the region’s populace, and a lot of construction work today is still done on pen and paper, let alone spreadsheets. Moreover, like elsewhere in the world, the sector has proven particularly resistant to adopting new technologies.

Argentine startup Nuqlea, though, is taking a different tack to solving some of these issues. The company offers a B2B platform, Nuqlea Studio, that doubles as a marketplace and a procurement portal for construction companies in Argentina, through which it hopes to build an ecosystem of partners to speed up procurement, and therefore, the entire construction process.

There’s a big opportunity for construction tech to turn things around here. According to the development bank of Latin America and the Caribbean (CAF), around 120 million people in this region live in inadequate and informal housing — that’s considerable given the region’s total population is around 600 million. But like elsewhere, the construction sector is still highly fragmented, and productivity growth is stagnating.