Ravish Ailinani

Ravish Ailinani

Ravish Ailinani, Partner of Dallas Venture Capital (DVC). Ravish Ailinani has extensive experience in corporate strategy, finance and venture capital investments. He has over $70B of announced transaction experience including M&A, IPOs, growth stage investing, equity and debt capital market transactions and capital raises.

Why DVC Invested in Citylitics?

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Trillions of dollars are spent annually to build, maintain, and service infrastructure globally, ranging from water treatment facilities to bridges to healthcare facilities. Per The American Society of Civil Engineers, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act signed in November 2021 offers a massive 46% increase in US infrastructure spending over the next 10 years, with $550B in new funds, totaling $1.2T. Despite the significant economic footprint and mission-critical nature, infrastructure purchasing and procurement is broken. Sales processes are inefficient, opaque, and unpredictable, with an overreliance on human-driven information-sharing in fragmented, localized markets.

Citylitics aggregates and analyzes the vast amount of public data generated by cities, utilities, and public agencies to produce meaningful market intelligence with measurable impact. Empowered by the Citylitics solution, engineering and construction firms, consultants, and other industry participants can cut through the noise and reach the right decision makers at the right time. With this increased federal funding and growing infrastructure gap, it is more important than ever that providers are able to efficiently and effectively work with government agencies and utilities, and Citylitics bridges this gap.

Every year, the United States generates millions of public documents such as council meeting minutes, budges, capital plans, permit filings, environmental reports and more. This data is buried in thousands of disparate sources in unstructured and non-standardized formats. This is rich data with significant predictive ability, and Citylitics has the expertise to source, ingest, normalize, and interpret this data at scale. Citylitics customers have unique insight into which of their prospects will be procuring which services and when. Historically, business development teams would have had to spend countless hours of research to generate the same insights that Citylitics can produce at scale. Citylitics is a huge time-saver as it allows business development teams to focus on the most high priority prospects, saves significant time on research, and arms them with competitor data and other benchmarking tools to help them build new customer relationships.

When investing in vertical software and data businesses e.g. SaaS or DaaS, DVC looks to invest in companies operating in large verticals with a keen focus on creating value for customers and a proven track record of doing so. From our first discussions with the founders of Citylitics, Ahmed and Sunit, to our discussions with their customers, it was clear that Citylitics had created demonstrable value for its customers. In particular, we were excited to hear from customers that the intelligence from Citylitics became even more value additive as they provided data and feedback for Citylitics to incorporate. This feedback loop is powerful and is not unlike the algorithms that Netflix uses to serve you your next movie or TV show to binge. Citylitics doubled its recurring revenue in 2021 with much of this growth coming from existing customers upgrading their accounts based on positive customer experience and demonstrable results.

Today, Citylitics works with over 80 companies, including market leaders such as Aegion, Echologics, and EXP. To date, Citylitics has focused on the water and transportation sub-verticals. According to US Environmental Protection Agency drinking water, wastewater, and irrigation systems will require $632 billion in additional investment over the next decade and Citylitics is well positioned to deliver predictable insights to their customers as The Federal, State and Local Governments activates these infrastructure investments.  Citylitics solution has broad applicability in a range of industries that touch every corner of our lives. Citylitics is only scratching the surface!

DVC prides itself on backing ambitious founders who want to solve big problems and create significant value. With this capital and the support of existing investors, DVC, and our co-lead investor Cerium Technology Investors, Citylitics is well-positioned to continue its growth and change how infrastructure is procured forever. DVC is excited to be a part of the journey ahead for Citylitics.

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