Real Estate Marketing & Beyond
Miami-based real estate software company Gridics has announced it has raised $1.6 million in additional seed capital. The round was led by BH3, a real estate developer with projects in South Florida and New York City, and Dune Road Capital. The company will use this investment to accelerate development and sales of the Zonar.City platform to cities and real estate developers.
Gridics was founded on a vision to revolutionize the way cities and real estate developers interact with zoning codes. By bringing 2D text to a visualized 3D interface the company is streamlining an antiquated process. Earlier this year the company launched Zonar, a map-based zoning code application and proprietary rules engine that allows users to quickly view a 3D, by-right development potential of a specific parcel or parcels. In addition, the application enables the customization of usage scenarios such as residential, mixed use, office, hotel or commercial. Gridics is seeing strong early adoption of the application by city and county planning, zoning and economic development departments as well as developers, architects, commercial brokers and land use attorneys in the private sector.
In April Gridics announced a contract with the City of Miami to use Zonar to expedite and streamline the analysis and processing of development plan reviews. It was then that lead investor BH3 became familiar with Zonar. "Zonar has become invaluable to our business," says BH3 Principal, Daniel Lebensohn. "Using Zonar, we are able to identify new development opportunities, quickly run custom scenario analyses and view applicable variances and waivers. That analysis used to take us days to complete and cost thousands of dollars but can now be handled in a few minutes with Zonar."
"Since our Miami launch, we've seen a very strong response from municipalities, large and small, across the US and even internationally," said CEO of Gridics, Jason Doyle. "Gaining the investment support of a leading real estate developer like BH3 after first becoming a customer is the best validation we could ask for. In the coming months, we will be opening all five boroughs of New York City on the platform and expect to add several direct city contracts."
Dune Road Capital, the other participant in this round, is an experienced technology investment firm and led a previous round of funding in Gridics. "We are extremely pleased with the execution by the Gridics team and are thrilled with the initial market response to the Zonar.City platform," said Peter Richards of Dune Road Capital. "We believe Zonar a game changer that revolutionizes the way the real estate community interacts with its workflow. We are excited to partner with BH3 and believe users wanting to become investors further validates the company's vision."
