Delhi-based AI landscape automation startup Attentive AI recently closed its Series A2 funding round, bringing its total Series A funding to $12 million across two tranches (A1 and A2). The A2 round was led by Tenacity Ventures, with additional support from Vertex Ventures, Peak XV Partners, and InfoEdge Ventures.
With this latest funding, the company plans to deepen its AI automation capabilities, alongside expanding into new markets, and enhance operational efficiency for the landscaping and construction sectors.
Speaking on leading investors backing the startup, the co-founder Shiva Dhawan, in a recent conversation with AIM, attributed it to their focused vision. “These investors believe in our vision of AI-enabled services transforming trillion-dollar industries,” Dhawan said.
Founded in 2017 by three friends from IIT-D, Dhawan, Rishabjit Singh, and Aishwarya Maurya, Attentive.ai provides AI-powered solutions for the landscaping and outdoor services industry.
“With our AI-based product – Beam AI, our users can save valuable time spent on doing manual takeoffs and focus on driving growth for their business. This funding is a testament to our commitment to this mission,” said the co-founder, Dhawan, sharing its mission of being the best reconstruction solution in the industry.
Currently, the company focuses on North America markets, where takeoffs (measuring site areas) from PDFs are a standard procedure owing to intellectual property concerns making the process labour-intensive.
What about India?
“The Indian market operates differently. CAD files are more widely circulated here, which simplifies takeoffs. In the US, PDF files dominate, and extracting measurements from them is significantly harder,” shared Dhawan, in an earlier interaction with AIM.
This fundamental difference in workflows makes the US a more suitable market for Attentive.ai’s solutions.
Targeting a Niche Market: Its success lies in its ability to cater to a niche but significant market. The billion-dollar landscaping and construction industries have traditionally been overlooked by AI companies. Attentive.ai recognized this gap and utilised its expertise in computer vision to develop customised solutions.
“These industries have huge potential but are largely ignored by technology firms. If you can build for them, it creates a moat,” said Dhawan.
Co-Founder & MD Tenacity Ventures, Rohit Razdan said that they have been tracking Attentive ai for more than a year now. “During this time Shiva and the Attentive team made strong progress on bringing cutting edge software tools to both the outdoor services and the construction industry. They understand that these industries are underserved, and the AI/software augmentation of a workforce that has a big capacity crunch, is very timely,” he said.
The startup will continue to focus in the US as Dhawan believes a better opportunity lies in the far West. “We aren’t focusing on India in the short- or medium-term because the US market offers better opportunities and cost arbitrage,” he said.
