Urban infrastructure is often prone to wear and tear, leading to safety risks and costly repairs if not properly maintained. Traditional inspection methods can be invasive, time-consuming, and inefficient, making it difficult to detect hidden structural issues. Singapore-based WaveScan addresses this challenge by offering a non-destructive, AI-powered inspection solution that enables cities to monitor and manage infrastructure more effectively, ensuring safety, longevity, and sustainability.
A spin-off from A*STAR, WaveScan harnesses electromagnetics-based sensor technology and AI to offer a cutting-edge non-destructive testing (NDT) solution for urban infrastructure. Their approach ensures the safety, resilience, and sustainability of cities by providing data-driven insights for managing and maintaining critical infrastructure.
By focusing on NDT, WaveScan aims to extend the lifespan of infrastructure, enhance safety standards, and promote efficiency in urban development.
Founded by Dr. Kush Agarwal in 2018, WaveScan has benefited from strong support from A*STAR. Senior scientists contributed to the development of its core radar sensor technology and signal processing algorithms. The company has grown through government grants, awards, and a successful SEED funding round in 2021.
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Now boasting a team of 11 professionals, WaveScan is at a pivotal point, with recurring revenue contracts and a hybrid business model of equipment sales, leasing, and technology-enabled services. As they expand, the company is ramping up operations to manage its increasing customer base.
Learn more about them in this email interview with Dr. Agarwal. The following is an edited excerpt of the conversation.
What are the problems that you aim to solve with Wavescan, and why is your solution better than the existing alternative?
Today’s built environment industry uses destructive testing to precisely measure embedded or concealed structures, such as metallic rebars inside concrete slabs and brackets holding facade panels. This is mainly because most non-destructive testing (NDT) technologies lack spatial resolution, meaning they cannot scan and image accurate dimensions and conditions of the embedded/concealed structures.
Over the years, we have developed a high-resolution microwave holographic imaging (MHI) technology that enables the needed spatial resolution for these target use cases to conduct diagnostics imaging rather than pre-screening and minimise destructive testing.
Since our scanning technology is fully contactless, we are automating the inspection processes using robotics, hence also addressing the manpower and safety issues in our Built Environment industry.
Can you tell us about the product development journey at WaveScan?
Since the inception of WaveScan, our core focus while developing the product has been understanding the industry requirements and end-users. Most of our early team members were scientists and researchers, so we had the necessary skills to develop the tech but needed to gain more profound know-how of the Built Environment industry’s pain points.
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Since the start, we have been working closely with the Building Construction Authority (BCA) to learn about these industry technology gaps and Singapore’s regulations around structural and facade inspections and showcase our capabilities to get expert feedback. Once we had a minimum viable product (MVP), we started test-bedding it with various commercial clients for their diverse use cases.
The technology was extensively advanced during those phases before we commercially launched the first generation of our scanner product. Since this electronic hardware system uses electromagnetic waves, the scanner underwent various regulatory compliance tests before achieving the Certificate of Conformity Europe (CE) mark and later Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) registration for registration in Singapore.
Please tell us more about your users or customers!
The built environment industry is fast evolving, and technology is being adopted to address its diverse needs.
Since our MVP stage, we have worked closely with early adopters to test-bed, advance, and sometimes customise our tech solution to meet specific inspection requirements. Our customers comprise private construction, inspection services, facilities management (FM), and professional engineers (PE) firms, to Government agencies such as the Housing Development Board (HDB), all of whom have been incoming requests, meaning we do not do marketing and pre-sales at the moment.
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We actively engage in our Built Environment’s ecosystem and get introduced to these companies via referrals or word of mouth. Our current focus is on scaling up nationally with HDB with ongoing deployments on water leakage detections using our first-of-kind IngressScan
tech solution. We also have a few ongoing overseas engagements, such as nuclear power plants and tunnelling works, where end clients are engaging with us for our accuracy in scanning the exact diameters and locations of rebars.
What is your funding history?
At WaveScan, we have been extremely fortunate to receive robust support from Singapore’s government agencies, including non-dilutive grants and startup awards totalling over US$2 million. This enabled us to raise capital selectively until the pre-product was ready and successfully benchmarked and validated by commercial customers.
We raised our SEED Round in 2021, using the funds to clear the regulatory tests, achieve CE marks, and launch the commercial product in early 2022. Over the last two years, we have built our revenue numbers to establish year-on-year growth and break-even revenue last year.
We are fundraising to fuel the company’s growth with a customer base in six countries outside Singapore, including Hong Kong, Japan, India, Australia, China, and Saudi Arabia. Financial prudence is vital to building deep-tech companies, which need longer go-to-market time and break-even and inflexion points in business, and we have followed this principle carefully since the start of WaveScan.
What is your big plan for 2024 and beyond?
We are now at a scale-up stage with established commercial use cases of our technology in the Built Environment industry.
Earlier this year (2024), we started piloting our IngressScan2122, a water leakage detection solution with HDB. We plan to roll it out nationwide next year!
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Building upon our successful engagements in Singapore and similarities in industry regulations, we have incorporated our Hong Kong subsidiary. We are working on replicating our use cases with industry stakeholders there.
This year, we have also engaged with major oil and gas companies outside Singapore, particularly in Australia and Saudi Arabia. We have already been working with the top three in Singapore.
Our significant plans for 2024 and beyond are now to scale globally in the strategic target markets and build up ARR clients.
We also look forward to continued BCA support and guidance and events like International Built Environment Week (IBEW) 2024, which help us network and spread the word. While at home, as a Singaporean home-grown construction tech startup, we want to grow nationwide with HDB and help them solve resident’s issues, improving the turn-around time of complaints to address the root causes, enhancing the quality of life in public housing and hence our technology benefiting lives of everyday Singaporeans.
That would be the right way of giving back to Singapore’s taxpayers, as we’ve benefited from various government grants.
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Image Credit: Wavescan
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