Vikram's Fall/Winter 2025 Travel Diary

Vikram Mehta

12/23/20255 min read

Since commencing the longest uninterrupted business trip of my professional career, I’ve been most fortunate to have been afforded the opportunity to meet with several dozen C-suite executives of mid-sized and large enterprises from around the world as well as CEOs of important Systems Integration (SI) companies who operate in our space – mid market and large enterprises that operate their businesses from large scale buildings. These companies collectively represent over a trillion dollars in annual revenues building, owning, operating, and managing over 2 billion sq ft of space, and all crying out for IP based, AI driven systems with unified pane-of-glass for managing building infrastructure. These requirements are presently not being addressed adequately by MEP equipment OEMs (Honeywell, Schnieder, Siemens, Trane, Carrier, Cummins, etc.) nor by behemoth IP network equipment OEMs (Cisco, HPE, Juniper, etc.).

A large-scale building has a lot of infrastructure associated with it; for example:

Secure WiFi Connectivity for Mobile Devices in Common Areas (laptops & mobile phones in lobby areas, cafeterias, and other common areas);
Classic Building Infrastructure (firefighting and suppressant systems, HVAC plants, diesel generation plants, uninterruptible power supply systems, lighting, parking garage access systems, physical surveillance, building access control systems, etc.); and
AI powered Audio Video Control Systems (for video walls in common spaces of a building, or AV equipment in a shared building theater/board room/etc.)

(1) is where the company started on April 2nd 2024 and achieved early success. (2) is what the company spent summer and fall of 2025 building and testing in the market, and (3) is what is undergoing market testing at this writing (stay tuned for more). Such unique capabilities make for a great moat and enable us to stay ahead of the competition.

Below is a small sampling of the movers and shakers I had the pleasure of meeting and engaging in mutually beneficial partnership discussions:

DLF: India's largest developer, with over 185 projects covering 220 million sq ft across 15 states and 24 cities. Each project can have anywhere between 75,000 and 100,000 endpoints that need to be monitored and autonomously controlled. Even a meager $4/month/managed endpoint represents anywhere between $600M+ to $800M+/year opportunity for our platform just within DLF.

IHCL: South East Asia's top 3 luxury brand hotel owners and operators, with 392 existing properties and 143 new ones under development.

JLL: Headquartered in Chicago with a presence in 80 countries around the world and ranked 188 on the Fortune 500 list, commanding revenues of $25 billion/year, JLL provides real estate management services for supersized luxury commercial and residential buildings. They surprised me with a room full of their top executives. What was supposed to be a brief 20-minute demo of our BMS solution with one person lasted a good two hours with a long list of projects to follow up on.

RMZ: Has over 67 million square feet of assets and is aiming for a rapid expansion to 87 million square feet in the coming years. RMZ is known for its "zero-debt" business model and has been a major player in building and leasing buildings to multi-national corporations. They are building one of the largest and most modern 6-tower LEED Platinum complexes in the world on a 13-acre campus (project managed by Tuner) that will house AI tenants like Google, Open AI, xAI, Anthropic, Meta, Oracle, and Microsoft, just to name a few. This complex will also feature NeXTnet’s AI powered BMS managing approximately 600,000 endpoints (a $70M+ opportunity).

AIPL: 800+ acres of high-end residential space, 10,500+ customers, 60+ iconic projects, 10 million+ sq. feet of commercial space is exclusively focused on the expat community (residential) and multinational business (commercial) market. We’re working with them to implement a fully autonomous BMS system for the AIPL Business Club facility.

SITA: South Africa's largest IT Service Provider with over 26 Data Centers where NeXTnet BMS went live two weeks ago, monitoring temperature, humidity, and other critical environmental metrics that data center operators monitor.

AEON Consultants: Managing Partner Mr. Rakheja is Asia’s foremost expert on MEP (Mechanical, Electrical & Plumbing Infrastructure) & BMS (Building Management Solution) with over 4,000 projects under his belt. He also serves on the Board of ASHRAE (American Society of Heating, Refrigerating & Air conditioning Engineers). NeXTnet is installing our AI powered BMS solution at AEON's headquarters and it will be a premiere global reference site for us.

Turner: #1 in construction management in USA; $20 billion in annual revenues, 1,500 active projects across USA, MEA, SEA, and PRC that collectively represent over 430 m sq ft of commercial buildings.

Mace Group Ltd, commonly known as Mace, is a global construction business headquartered in London employing nearly 7,300 people, across five continents, and with a turnover of around £2 billion.

Buro Happold, a British Building Construction & Services Company with a strong foothold in the Middle East and 23 other major cities around the world.

What excites me the most?

$7M in ARR; a $100m+ TCV (Total Contract Value) pipeline that translates to approximately $25m ARR (Annual Recurring Revenue) from the first 30 projects alone. NeXTnet's tiny team have made this possible in less than two years and I want to salute every one of them for believing in the vision and delivering the components that will play a critical role in networks for the autonomous era.

It's daunting, given that we are a mere 612 days into our journey as company, yet very exhilarating given the rapid success and interest in our unique offering.