Pre-dig radar and cable-locator surveys that mark buried utilities on site
TL;DR Trenchsight sends survey crews with ground-penetrating radar and cable locators to a site before excavation, marks what's buried and hands over a map file. Road, metro and pipeline contractors pay per job. Utilities buy the data to fill gaps in their own records.
Digging crews in India cut cables and pipes they can't see. One industry report puts telecom fibre cuts at about 10 lakh a year, with losses estimated at ₹3,000 crore[1], though it doesn't say where that figure comes from. Each cut takes connectivity, water or power away from people nearby and costs repair crews days.
The Department of Telecommunications launched its Call Before u Dig app in March 2023 so excavators could alert asset owners first[2]. Kerala says using the app is mandatory under the Indian Telegraph (Infrastructure Safety) Rules, 2022[3]. But an alert only helps if the owner knows where its lines run, and older networks were often laid without accurate maps.
The seed wanted AI sensors buried along utility lines. That doesn't work for existing networks, because fitting sensors means digging up the very pipes and cables you want to protect, and buried electronics struggle for power and signal through soil. So we kept the goal of fewer strikes and changed the method.
Before a contractor digs, a two-person crew scans the work corridor. Ground-penetrating radar finds pipes, ducts and voids, and electromagnetic locators trace live cables. The crew sprays marks on the road and records positions with GNSS. Within 48 hours the client gets a report and a GIS file showing each line, its likely depth and a confidence grade.
Asset owners such as gas distributors and telecom firms can buy the same data to correct their records and load them where excavators look. Software can help read radar images faster, but a trained surveyor signs off every map. Trenchsight promises fewer surprises, not zero.
Contractors on road widening, metro, drainage and fibre jobs pay per survey, since a strike means delay and penalties. City gas, water and telecom operators pay for corridor surveys of their own networks. Smart city companies are a third buyer. I couldn't find a public price list for utility surveys in India. My assumption is pricing per running kilometre or per site.
Call Before u Dig has more than 25,000 registered users, and Mumbai's municipal corporation made it mandatory for contractors[1]. Notifying owners is now routine, and that shows how often owners lack maps. Better radar has arrived too - a listed Indian mapping company launched a multi-array 3D radar system for utility mapping in March 2026[4].
Nobody publishes a figure for India's utility-locating survey market. The narrow anchors are about 10 lakh fibre cuts a year and the ₹3,000 crore loss estimate[1], both from one unsourced report, so treat them as a sense of scale. Counting the active excavation contractors in one city is a better bottom-up test.
That listed Mumbai mapping company is moving into 3D radar mapping and city subsurface twins[4]. A radar startup incubated at IIT Gandhinagar offers utility mapping and highway inspection[5]. Several small survey firms list radar services too. The gap is a fast, standard pre-dig service that contractors can book like a lab test, with results in the format asset owners use.
| Difficulty | Moderate (48/100) |
| Starting capital | ₹60 L–1.2 Cr |
| Time to launch | 3–6 months |
The equipment is bought, not built. The hard part is people, because radar images take skill to read and accuracy drops in wet clay and crowded corridors. Night work, traffic permits and keeping crews busy across a city decide your margin.
No licence is needed to run surveys, but digging and road rules sit around every job.
Building this outside India? The categories above usually have a local equivalent, so check with your own regulator.
Don't let AI sign off a map. Radar misses some pipes in wet clay, and a trained surveyor has to check every line.
Want to work out the AI layer for Trenchsight? Talk to Yash →
I like this as a practical services business for a founder with surveying or geophysics experience in one large city. If you want a software product from day one then look elsewhere. Prove first that ten contractors rebook after their first survey and that your strike rate on surveyed jobs stays near zero.
Plan for roughly ₹60 L–1.2 Cr, mostly on radar units, cable locators and trained crews.
No sector licence. Check that your radar has WPC approval, follow Call Before u Dig and confirm road-work permissions for each site.
Yes, the service is common abroad. Check your local dig-notification law, radio rules and how contractors there buy surveys.
The free Trenchsight validation kit has the line-by-line capital breakdown, the effort scoring, the excavation rules checklist, a 14-day validation sprint with pass/fail targets, a 90-day launch plan, 10 interview questions for contractors and utilities, and 5 assumptions to test. Download the kit →
Thinking about building Trenchsight or something close to it? The make-or-break work is training surveyors who read radar reliably and keeping crews fully booked, and I'm happy to think that through with you. 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.