In a Series A funding round headed by businessman and investor Ronnie Screwvala, voice AI firm Navana.ai has raised Rs 40 crore ($4.2 million). Antler India, Sharad Sanghi, Sandeep Singhal, Paula Mariwala, and other investors participated in the round.
The company intends to use the additional funding to build its AI Contact Center and automated assessment platform, improve its speech models for Indian languages and dialects, and increase the number of Voice AI deployments among BFSI businesses.
Navana.ai, which was founded by brothers Raoul and Jai Nanavati, focuses on data protection and compliance through on-premise deployments while offering voice AI solutions to regulated businesses. For BFSI firms including Bajaj Finserv, Protean, Ujjivan Small Finance Bank, Jana Small Finance Bank, and Grihum Housing Finance, the startup says it has processed over 100 million voice AI minutes.
Twelve Indian languages and forty-five dialects are covered by the proprietary speech models created by Navana.ai. Its models are built to deal with issues including code switching, overlapping speech, background noise, and regional accents. Additionally, the company has worked with Microsoft Research, the Gates Foundation, IIT Madras, and IISc Bengaluru.
In a benchmarking test across Indian voice AI platforms using real-world speech samples, the startup claimed that its Bodhi speech model scored the highest accuracy.
According to Ronnie Screwvala, Navana.ai is tackling India’s language complexity, and voice AI may play a significant role in the nation’s digital infrastructure. Additionally, he emphasized regulatory compliance and data localization as important factors for enterprise adoption.
Navana.ai is developing voice AI infrastructure for regulated industries; BFSI organizations are using their Bodhi speech models to provide large-scale customer service in their native tongues.
