Flood and heat risk screens for city works, written for DPRs and bond papers
TL;DR Keelstone checks a single city project, like a drain, sewage plant, road or water main, for flood and heat exposure over its working life. It delivers a short screen that drops straight into the detailed project report or a bond offer document. City engineers and their consultants pay per project, because lenders and investors keep asking.
Indian cities are building assets that may not survive the weather they'll face. A 2025 World Bank study of 24 cities, prepared with the housing ministry, found that without adaptation yearly rain-flood losses may hit US$5 billion by 2030 and rise to US$30 billion by 2070[1]. It also notes that new construction is shrinking the ground that soaks up storm water.
Most project reports still size a drain or road on past rainfall and site levels. How many ask whether the asset floods in a heavier storm in 2040, or whether a pumping station sits in a low pocket? Very few. So when a city then tries to borrow, investors have little to go on.
Keelstone screens one asset at a time. A city engineer or design consultant uploads the alignment or site boundary and basic design data. Keelstone overlays it with terrain models, drainage paths, past waterlogging reports, rainfall projections and land-surface heat data, and then runs a set of standard checks. Which stretches flood in a 1-in-25-year storm? Does the plant sit below the road around it? Will a footpath or bus depot land in one of the city's hottest patches?
The output is a 6–10 page screen with maps, a risk rating per segment and a list of design changes worth costing - raise a culvert, move a substation, add shade. A short version is formatted for the climate section of a bond or green bond document. An analyst reviews every report before it goes out, because cities will be judged on it.
The seed described a general city climate-risk platform. I kept the goal but made it per project, because a city buys reports it needs for a file, not dashboards.
City engineers and planners use it. The payer is the urban local body, a smart-city company or the consultant hired to write the project report, who passes the cost on. Cities that plan to borrow are the keenest buyers, and only 18 of 253 municipal corporations have issued bonds so far[2]. I found no public price for project climate screens in India, so working out the price is part of the first sprint.
The housing ministry has scored cities on climate readiness every year since 2019, with adaptation indicators in the framework[3]. Green municipal bonds have arrived too - Ghaziabad in 2021, Ahmedabad in 2023 and Vadodara in 2024, the last one certified under an international climate bond standard[2]. Multilateral lenders already screen the projects they fund for climate risk[4].
There's no public figure for climate-risk screening work sold to Indian cities. The nearest firm number is the municipal bond market, with ₹4,204 crore outstanding as of March 2024, small but growing[2]. Adjacent - the World Bank puts India's need for resilient, low-carbon urban infrastructure at about US$2.4 trillion by 2050[1]. That's the spending your screens would sit inside, not your market.
One Indian climate-data startup runs street-level sensors in about 200 cities and raised ₹25 crore in December 2025[5]. It sells live climate data, not project reports. A US climate analytics firm sells climate-risk analytics to companies and governments at a price few Indian cities can afford[6]. Large engineering consultancies do bespoke studies for big loans. The gap is a cheap, standard screen for routine city projects.
| Difficulty | Moderate (42/100) |
| Starting capital | ₹60 L–1.2 Cr |
| Time to launch | 6–9 months |
Public terrain and rainfall data at street scale is coarse and city drainage maps are often missing, so every report needs judgment. The harder part is selling to city governments, whose purchases crawl through tenders and committee approvals. Consultants who write project reports are the faster route.
An advisory climate screen needs no licence to sell. Say clearly that it is not a structural or design certification.
Building this outside India? The categories above usually have a local equivalent, so check with your own regulator.
Don't trust AI with the final risk rating. Lenders and cities will judge you on it, so a trained analyst checks every report before it leaves.
Want to work out the AI layer for Keelstone? Talk to Yash →
I'd back a founder with hydrology or urban-drainage training who has worked with city engineering departments. If you're a pure software team hoping to sell dashboards then skip this one. First prove that two design consultants will pay for screens on live projects, and that a lender or rating agency finds them useful.
My estimate is ₹60 L–1.2 Cr, mostly for analysts, data and the first year of selling to consultants. The kit has the line items.
Not for advisory screens. Acting as a formal green bond reviewer is different and needs approval from the certifying body, so check that before offering it.
Yes, cities everywhere need climate sections in project files and bond papers. Data sources and lender rules differ, so check yours first.
The free Keelstone validation kit has the line-by-line capital breakdown, the effort scoring, the rules and bond-standard checklist, a 14-day validation sprint with pass/fail targets, a 90-day launch plan, 10 interview questions for city engineers and consultants, and 5 assumptions to test. Download the kit →
Thinking about building Keelstone or something close to it? The hard part is producing screens city engineers trust and actually getting paid by public bodies, and I'm glad to talk through how you'd tackle both. If you need a hand, you know where to find me. Talk to Yash →
For illustration only. Names are fictional and ideas hypothetical; sourced facts are real but may be out of date. Nothing here is legal, financial or professional advice, and Yash Khatri is not personally liable for any use of it. Read the full disclaimer.