Bacterial cementation can be a pathway to sustainable cementation in soil mounds as it consumes miniscule amount of energy in comparison to engineered cement. Bacteria cement grains through progressive formation of inter-granular bridges. This study presents a numerical framework to model the sparsely cemented granular heaps. A rigorous experimental program has been presented to observe the relationship between the level of cementation and the shapes of heap. A discrete element model (DEM) for sparsely cemented grains has been developed. The extent of cementation is modelled through random clumping of grains. It is observed that DEM is capable to capture the effect of cementation through grain clumping. A parametric study of the grain size distribution, internal friction angle, shape of clumps and the extent of cementation has been performed. The results show that friction angle, grain size distribution and grain clumping have considerable effect on the shape of heap. A cubic polynomial is able to capture the shape of heap reasonably well. The results will be useful for predicting the profile of sparsely cemented granular heaps. (C) 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.