SquadStack.ai shifts voice AI pricing from minutes to sales outcomes

Indian voice AI platform SquadStack.ai on Tuesday announced that it has introduced outcome-based pricing for its Voice AI sales agents, tying what customers pay to revenue realised rather than the number of minutes spoken or conversations handled.

The model is currently live for sales use cases in banking and financial services and will be extended to other sectors in the coming months.

The move comes as voice AI vendors in India compete largely on per-minute pricing, with rates typically ranging between ₹2 and ₹6 a minute. SquadStack argues that the metric does not reflect the value enterprises derive from voice AI, as businesses ultimately pay for outcomes such as loan disbursals, insurance renewals and university enrolments.


“Two rupees a minute is a trap. Voice AI being cheaper than humans is true, and it is the least interesting thing about it,” said Apurv Agrawal, co-founder and CEO of SquadStack.ai.

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“Per-minute pricing turns voice AI into a BPO with better margins and pays vendors not to care whether the call is converted,” he added.

Under the new model, customers pay a fixed base fee for running the AI agents along with a success fee linked to the business outcome generated. Before deployment, SquadStack works with customers to map their sales funnel, establish baseline metrics and estimate the potential lift from its AI agents. The mix between the fixed and success-based components is determined based on the customer and use case.

For personal lending, for instance, SquadStack earns a fee on loans disbursed through conversations handled by its AI agent, benchmarked as a share of the disbursed amount. For credit cards, the fee is linked to cards issued.

SquadStack said it is taking on the performance risk based on six years of running sales funnels for consumer brands in India. Its AI agents currently run sales campaigns for DMI Finance, BankBazaar, IndiaMART, Kreditbee and AngelOne, among more than 60 other brands.

DMI Finance has disbursed more than ₹700 crore in loans through the platform, with disbursals 30% higher than those achieved through human agents, according to SquadStack. BankBazaar has engaged more than 8 crore leads while halving its customer acquisition cost, while IndiaMART saw 20% higher conversions at 15% lower cost across more than 2 crore buyer leads in the first year of its deployment.

SquadStack said 93% of its proofs of concept convert into full production deployments, compared with an industry average of around 25%.

The company said outcome-based pricing has gained traction in the US in customer support, with companies such as Sierra, Intercom's Fin, Zendesk and HubSpot charging based on resolved interactions.

The economics are different for India's predominantly outbound sales market, SquadStack said, where the value of a voice AI interaction is more directly tied to revenue.

“Cutting calling costs by 60% saves a lender about 2% of revenue; lifting conversion by 10-15% adds 10-15% of revenue,” Agrawal said, arguing that AI agents can run thousands of experiments simultaneously across factors such as timing, language, messaging and follow-ups.

The company said it is betting that pricing its AI agents against business outcomes, rather than call volumes, will better align its incentives with those of enterprises deploying the technology.