Changing "near" to "nearly" is a solution for the agreement of the modifier, but note that her sentence ends: "from the ground up".
I wanted to protect her use of a location metaphor using "near" to complement "from the ground up". I find modifier errors less egregious than mixed or "ungrounded" (sic) metaphors.
There is also the subject-verb agreement problem. The plural subject requires "are".
All in all, a 4.5 IELTS sentence.