Bentley Acceleration Initiatives has announced the acquisition of Chennai, India-based Nadhi Information Technologies, a specialist in project controls, analytics, and decision support for construction supply chains. Nadhi serves some of India’s leading construction sector participants, including contractors Larsen & Toubro and Kalpataru Power Transmission, real estate developers Mahindra Lifespaces and RMZ, and owner-operators DMRC (Delhi Metro) and Welspun Enterprises. Founded in 2008, Nadhi was incubated in the IIT Madras Research Park with advisors from the IIT Madras Building Technology and Construction Management faculty and the Lean Construction Institute.
Bentley Acceleration Initiatives is the internal incubator for strategic investments of Bentley Systems, the infrastructure engineering software company. Its objective is to bring together ecosystem partners in digital co-ventures. Nadhi brings to Bentley a critical mass of field-experienced professionals in construction automation, attuned to their region’s specific challenges and project dynamics. The acquisition strengthens Bentley’s focus on Asia, which is experiencing huge demand for new construction of infrastructure and has a keen appetite for digital workflows to help address this need. According to Fitch Solutions Country Risk and Industry Research, while China and the U.S. will remain the two highest-value construction markets globally, India and Indonesia will rise to the third and fourth highest-value markets by 2029.
Currently, project teams in Asia are often held back by conventional construction methodologies and obstacles to public cloud deployments, experiencing delays and cost overruns because of poorly coordinated schedules and the lack of visibility into project status. Project managers are looking for a solution that helps them interconnect their data silos—spanning documents, schedules, budgets, issues and risks, resources, and materials—all in one environment.
Some of the best-managed construction projects are now using Nadhi’s services to solve these challenges and improve their project delivery using digital workflows. Since offering lean construction consulting services in 2008, Nadhi has pioneered mobile-enabled project controls. In an offering explicitly configured for the needs of project teams in Asia, the integrated project controls in Nadhi’s nPulse software combines data-driven decision support and predictive analytics to give engineering and construction projects early warning of schedule risks and potential delays in milestone completion, advancing project planning and execution from reactive to proactive.
Dr. Ashit Gandhi, senior director, accelerated business development, Bentley Systems, said, “We are very pleased to welcome Nadhi’s construction automation experts as Bentley colleagues. Together, we see a significant new opportunity to help construction projects throughout Asia, especially for road and rail linear infrastructure, in ‘going digital’. Combining Nadhi’s proven project controls and analytics capabilities with Bentley’s SYNCHRO 4D construction modeling and field-based construction delivery will enable more integrated and efficient digital workflows, tailored specifically to Asian needs.”
Kalyan Vaidyanathan, CEO, Nadhi Information Technologies, said, “The whole team at Nadhi is excited to be joining Bentley Systems at this pivotal moment for India’s construction community. We look forward to deepening our capabilities in core areas of project controls and expanding our reach both in and beyond India for new opportunities. We believe, as part of Bentley, we will be even more strongly positioned to help our users to stay in control of their projects and to generate insights through analytics to avoid delays and improve confidence through visibility.”
Nadhi will add approximately 30 colleagues; its annualized revenues and profitability are not material to, and are not expected to meaningfully impact, the BSY financial outlook for 2021.
