Zacua Ventures

Investment decisions are led by the firm's three partners: Vivin Hegde, Mauricio Tessi Weiss, and Juan Nieto. All three previously built and ran ConTech-focused venture investment programs at Cemex, the global building-materials company, before launching Zacua. The partnership combines direct construction operating experience with corporate venture capital disciplines applied across multiple geographies.

Zacua sources through a combination of direct partner networks developed during their Cemex Ventures tenure and a formal Scout Program with partners stationed in Australia, MENA, and Japan. The firm also runs a proprietary knowledge-sharing initiative that publishes industry reports on AI in construction, construction robotics, and ConTech investor sentiment, which serves as an inbound magnet for early-stage founders in the built-environment space.

Zacua was founded by three former Cemex Ventures investment professionals who collectively led Cemex's corporate venture activities across multiple regions before spinning out. The firm is independent from Cemex, but the founding team's corporate venture background shapes Zacua's approach to helping portfolio companies engage with large construction corporates for pilots, procurement, and scaling.

The firm pursues a deliberately global mandate, with portfolio companies in North America, Europe, Latin America, and Asia Pacific. Team presence spans San Francisco and Madrid, with additional Scout Partners extending sourcing into Australia, the Middle East/North Africa, and Japan. The firm's Latin America practice is led by Margarita de la Peña, with deals in markets such as Brazil and Chile.

Zacua invests from pre-seed through Series A. The firm articulates three stages — Ideate, Build, Scale — reflecting a willingness to back founders from company formation through early commercial growth. Portfolio companies such as Document Crunch, Ecoworks, and Field Materials span these stages across different geographies and built-environment verticals.

The firm concentrates on three themes: productivity (digitizing construction processes), sustainability (decarbonizing building materials and retrofits), and urbanization (data infrastructure for cities and real estate). Investments span ConTech, InfraTech, and Real Estate Tech. The firm does not publicly list excluded sectors, but its portfolio composition suggests a deliberate avoidance of generalist enterprise SaaS, consumer internet, biotech, and fintech that lack a direct physical-built-world application.

The firm has not publicly disclosed a separate philanthropic foundation or donor-advised structure. Zacua emphasizes industry knowledge-sharing through its proprietary reports, surveys, and newsletter rather than through a distinct grant-making entity. Dr. Anas Bataw participates in UN and WEF task groups on construction innovation and sustainability, but these are personal affiliations rather than Zacua institutional structures.