Attentive.ai, a startup constructing vertical software for landscaping and construction services within the U.S., has raised $7 million in a brand new funding round because it looks to reinforce its AI-led offerings and expand them to more businesses.
Led by Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia and India, the all-equity Series A round, which follows the sooner $5 million seed investment, also received participation from Attentive.ai’s existing investors: Peak XV’s Surge and InfoEdge Ventures. Moreover, Mumbai-based investment firm Tenacity Ventures has come on board this time through a secondary investment.
Landscaping and outdoor services primarily depend on manual measurements that involve labor and operational costs. Whether site measurement or paving maintenance, businesses spend tons of of dollars and tens of hours before kicking off their projects to estimate the associated fee, appropriate material and time required. Inaccurate estimates also sometimes result in overbidding and underbidding and impact revenue goals. As the true estate industry grows, landscaping and outdoor services corporations search for tech-driven solutions to bring efficiencies and cut operational expenses. Enter Attentive.ai to deal with these needs using AI and computer vision.
Founded in April 2021 with a spotlight specifically on North America, the Delaware-based startup, which has an office in India’s Noida, offers an end-to-end business management platform with AI-based workflows to bring automation to landscaping and construction corporations. The platform — already utilized by some major industry players, including Juniper, U.S. Lawns, Beary Landscaping, Greenscape, Nanak and East Coast Facilities, amongst others — helps corporations save time and effectively bid for outdoor contracts using automated site measurements through Automeasure. The automation tool targets services resembling landscape, paving and facilities maintenance and snow management.
Corporations using Attentive.ai’s Automeasure can get measurements of properties — be they business, retail chains or housing societies — using a Google Maps-like interface from where they receive the estimates by looking for a selected property address and defining the lot boundary based on their requirements. Moreover, the tool allows users to manually upload blueprints in PDF in order that the software can trace and determine the amount of fabric required based on the positioning size and other parameters. The tool also lets corporations transfer all their existing construction takeoffs. Moreover, the startup provides a dedicated on-site assistance app, which might be installed on a mobile or tablet device, to assist the operations team add notes to the sitemaps by geotagging site data, and lets the bottom staff access real-time data while on the go.
Image Credits: Attentive.ai
Along with Automeasure, Attentive.ai has a flagship, cloud-based business management software for landscaping and construction corporations. Called Speed up, it automates sales processes and operational workflows, gives access to production planning with time beyond regulation alerts and live sales pipeline tracking, and prevents ghost clock-ins. The software can be integrated with aerial and blueprint takeoffs.
“Earlier, businesses used to go on to the positioning, measure the positioning — go in with a measuring wheel and measure the complete site. It used to take hours and days. Now, they will just enter the address of that site. Computer vision will process all of the available aerial imagery of that site and provide you with the info… we’re also doing generative AI-based automatic scheduling of various properties and jobs that corporations must do,” said Shiva Dhawan, co-founder and CEO of Attentive.ai, in an interview.
Dhawan co-founded the startup together with Rishabjit Singh (CTO) and Aishwarya Maurya (VP Product Strategy) to resolve a number of the most pressing concerns of construction and outdoor service businesses through its software that helps enhance their sales and operations.
Up until now, Attentive.ai focused on the landscaping industry. Nonetheless, with the brand new funding coming in, the startup has expanded its focus to construction operations and began targeting general and sub-contractors and suppliers in an industry which it considers to be valued at greater than $3 trillion, through a tool called Beam AI. It may well deliver multiple construction estimates concurrently after receiving blueprint plans from users by automating their tracing. On the back end, the startup has a high quality assurance team that reviews the auto-generated estimates.
Despite the fact that Attentive.ai is one in every of the few startups bringing automation to landscaping and construction operations, the industry has had some competitive solutions for a while. These include Aspire and LMN in landscaping, Bluebeam and StackCT in construction and Go iLawn and PropertyIntel in property measurement. Nonetheless, Dhawan told TechCrunch the startup has an AI-based DNA and is a deep tech AI services company, and its team features a background in fintech mapping and insurance.
“We come from an AI-based background where our strength is in the pc vision space, whereas these corporations don’t have that tech DNA,” he said.
The startup, the co-founder believes, also has the advantage of offering round the clock customer support from India, which is “highly cost-effective and reliable.”
Attentive.ai looks to utilize the fundraising to expand its go-to-market team within the U.S. and widen its headcount of 160, of which five are based within the U.S. and the remaining are in India, by hiring more people. Moreover, the startup plans to make use of a few of its fresh capital on product development.
“Attentive’s revolutionary technology leverages Vision AI to drive disruptions in old-economy industries resembling Outdoor Field Services and Construction. Organisations in these sectors are hungry for technology solutions that may drive efficiencies of their businesses. Shiva and his team have demonstrated tremendous commitment to addressing their customers’ needs and the delight was evident after we spoke to their customers,” said Nikhil Marwaha, senior executive director, at Vertex, in a prepared statement.
The startup, with a $4 million annual recurring revenue rate, has over 500 corporations as its customers across the U.S. and Canada, of which about 300 are landscaping, 100 are paving maintenance and 100 are construction corporations. It seeks so as to add more customers by bolstering its product and marketing.
