OnSite raises S$1.7 million to build AI for construction

OnSite has raised S$1.7 million in a seed funding round co-led by Tin Men Capital and Alter Global, with participation from Hustle Fund and Gondor Capital.

The Singapore startup will use the funding to expand its engineering team and further develop its AI-based communication platform for construction and facilities management groups.

OnSite is tackling a longstanding problem in construction, where project teams often rely on WhatsApp groups, phone calls, and paper records to manage site communication. This can result in lost information, delays, and payment disputes, especially for small and medium-sized contractors.

The platform is designed as a messaging system for construction teams, enabling workers to communicate through voice notes, photographs, and text while automatically organising that material by project, location, and timeline. It supports more than eight languages commonly used on worksites in Southeast Asia, including English, Mandarin, Tamil, Bengali, Cantonese, and Malay.

Singapore's construction sector is one of the country's larger industries, with demand projected at S$47-S$53 billion this year. OnSite cited estimates that digital inefficiencies cost the sector more than S$1.1 billion annually, while poor data and fragmented workflows create far higher costs across the global industry.

Founded by Poh Yong Han and Liam Appelson, the company draws on the pair's experience in family construction businesses in Singapore and New York. Poh Yong Han is a Rhodes Scholar with a PhD in anthropology from Oxford, while Appelson studied physics at Yale and has worked in carpentry and industrial design.

The founders said their focus is on building software that site workers can use without formal training, even in multilingual environments where teams often switch languages within the same conversation. That is a practical challenge on many construction sites in Southeast Asia, where communication can involve a wide range of workers, subcontractors, and supervisors.

"The core problem in construction is that documentation and communication are chaotic, unsearchable, and disconnected from the physical worksite, often resulting in costly disputes, delays, and lawsuits," said Poh Yong Han, chief executive officer and co-founder of OnSite.

"We are building a data management layer that will anchor every message, every photo, every voice note automatically to exactly where and when it happened, without training to use," Han said.

The company is currently in beta with design partners in Singapore and Hong Kong. Planned product work includes an assistant trained on construction chats, project analysis tools, predictive risk assessments, and integrations with third-party systems.

Sector Focus

For Tin Men Capital, the investment adds to a portfolio that already includes construction technology companies such as Hubble and Ailytics. The Singapore venture capital firm focuses on business software and frontier technology companies in Southeast Asia.

Construction technology has received relatively modest funding in Singapore compared with other startup categories. According to figures OnSite cited from Tracxn, construction tech businesses in Singapore raised S$3.2 million across two rounds last year and S$140.7 million over the past decade.

That limited funding base contrasts with the size of the wider market. OnSite pointed to the scale of the problem beyond Singapore, citing an estimate that bad data and fragmented workflows cost the global construction industry S$2.47 trillion in 2020.

"We're bringing consumer-grade UX to B2B software. The interface has to be as intuitive as the apps our users already know, but the backend has to do serious, enterprise-grade work," said Liam Appelson, chief product officer and co-founder of OnSite.

"If it takes training, we've failed," Appelson said.

Jeremy Tan of Tin Men Capital said the firm sees a need for tools designed around how the sector operates in the region.

"While we have seen the construction industry accelerate digital adoption, it needs tools built for its specific and complex workflows, within the cultural context of Southeast Asia," said Tan, co-founder of Tin Men Capital.

"OnSite's product-led approach, combined with the founders' unique domain expertise, presents a massive opportunity to transform the operating system for construction and facilities management across the region, shaping how AI creates value for a trillion-dollar global industry," he added.