By Rashmi Khotlande

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On most construction sites, progress is still tracked the old-fashioned way: site engineers armed with clipboards, Excel sheets, and endless WhatsApp threads. From reinforcing concrete slabs with steel bars to applying the final coat of paint, every stage demands checks for safety, quality, and structural soundness. But the process is slow, error-prone, and scattered—small lapses can snowball into costly delays.

Bengaluru-based Contineu, founded in 2023 by Harshil Naik and Kanao Ramesh, wants to change that. Using 360-degree cameras and AI, the startup captures real-time site data and transforms it into 3D models and actionable insights. With technology, the startup says it can spot defects faster, tighten accountability, and save engineers from hours of manual grunt work.

Naik, whose father runs a manufacturing and construction firm that sub-contracts for companies like L&T, noticed that managing multiple people on remote construction sites was a major challenge due to poor data access. Ramesh witnessed similar issues while working at Conxai, a CCTV-based construction surveillance company in Europe.

Ramesh explains that if an elevator’s openings are off by just 5mm, a measurement easily missed by site managers, the misaligned walls can interfere with other elements of the building. These errors are often discovered only during or after pouring concrete and removing the formwork, necessitating demolition and rebuilding entire columns with contractors who may have already moved on to other projects.

Naik says rework costs usually account for 5–7% of a project’s total value. “Since typical developer margins are around 10–15%, saving even a part of these rework costs can represent 50% of total project profits,” he says.
How Contineu works
Contineu uses AI to bring automation and accountability to construction sites. Workers walk the site with 360° camera–equipped helmets linked to an app, which captures ground-level data. The AI then builds 3D models mapped to floor plans, scans footage for safety hazards, quality issues, and rule violations across 150 defect categories, and tags them directly on-site.

The platform offers instant visibility for managers: a live map of covered and uncovered areas, ground-level updates, and a Google Street View–like walkthrough of the site. They can compare data across dates, track progress room by room, and access automated reports that replace hours of manual checks with clear, actionable insights.

“The principle is simple: anything that is measured gets improved,” Ramesh says. The startup enables subjective quality assessments to become objective, giving construction companies trackable metrics to monitor defect trends, resolution times, and detection speed.

The company uses advanced AI models designed for analysing images, which it has trained specifically for construction work using data collected over the past decade. Naik highlights that all client data is stored securely on AWS servers, meeting SOC 2 and ISO 27001 security standards.
Turning data into faster decisions
The construction AI brand works with Tier I developers building residential projects in Mumbai, Bengaluru, Kolkata, and Delhi-NCR. It also works with international project management consultant firms evaluating its services for India and the Asia-Pacific region, as well as with Tier I and Tier II general contracting firms.

Contineu processes nearly 30 lakh images every week, sifting through the approximately 600 images per floor across 300 floors per site, with three site scans conducted weekly across multiple active sites.

The startup aims to speed up decision-making by giving instant access to site data that would otherwise take hours or days to collect and analyse. It maintains human oversight through spot checks and periodic reviews. “Our role is that of an assistance tool rather than a replacement for human expertise,” Ramesh says.

On average, site engineers save around five hours each day, three hours in data collection and site walks, and two hours in parsing and extracting information, the startup says. Clients also report 3X faster defect detection and reporting while using only half the manpower used by traditional methods.

The construction industry is presently facing a severe labour shortage, from hands-on workers to site engineers, even in India. By taking over the grunt work of data gathering, Contineu frees site engineers and project managers to focus on critical decisions.
From funding to global markets
During AI development, Contineu faced a classic chicken-and-egg problem: construction companies would only grant site access to a proven product, but data was needed to train the AI. Naik solved this by collecting data from abandoned sites around Bengaluru, which helped train preliminary models and secure their first pilot customers. “Rather than waiting for ideal conditions, sometimes you need to creatively find ways to move forward,” he says.

Contineu has raised a total of Rs 12 crore so far, including a Rs 83 lakh pre-seed round from Entrepreneur First and a Rs 10 crore seed round in May 2025 led by SenseAI Ventures, with participation from Piper Serica Angel Fund. The funding has supported technology development and market expansion, with an initial focus on the quality management vertical and an expansion plan covering safety, progress tracking, and material quantities.

The founders are currently working on building custom models for specific areas, particularly 3D reconstruction, which involves creating foundation models for building 3D site models from captured video data.

The company is exploring expansion into the Middle East, the United Kingdom, and the United States over the coming year. It will continue to focus on construction quality management until it achieves market leadership in this space. It then plans to expand into adjacent sectors like facility management, oil and gas, fabrication, and infrastructure.

According to Fortune Business Insights, the global AI in construction market was valued at $3.93 billion in 2024 and is projected to reach $22.68 billion by 2032, exhibiting a CAGR of 24.6%. The startup competes with OpticVyu and BLDX in the Indian market, but its advanced AI integration gives it an edge. As Ramesh puts it, “The real value comes from making the unmeasurable measurable—whether that means tracking progress, spotting inefficiencies, or predicting delays before they happen.”