Plaud brings its AI Notetaker to India. Here’s what three days with the Note Pro felt like

Plaud enters India with two AI recorders and 2.5 million users globally. After three days with the Note Pro, the hardware is not the question. The premise is. Plaud enters India on August 24 with two products. The Note Pro, a credit-card-sized recorder with a colour display, costs Rs 20,990, while the wearable NotePin S is priced at ₹19,990. Both will be available through Amazon, Blinkit, Plaud's website and offline partners.

The pitch is simple. Record conversations, transcribe them, summarise them and turn them into actionable tasks. Plaud cites an independent Jabra study saying Indian employees spend an average of 8.8 hours a week in meetings, with 66% leaving without clear action items. But there is an obvious problem: your phone already records conversations and, increasingly, transcribes and summarises them too.

Who is buying this?

I spoke to Megumi Yoshinaga, Plaud's Head of APAC Marketing, about the company's early customer base. "Founders, CEOs. Every time they buy at least five devices all at once," she said. Other customers include lawyers, doctors, field salespeople and investment bankers. "Overall, the target audience are mainly very successful entrepreneurs and professionals."


That is a real market, but it is also a fairly narrow one. Yoshinaga said Bangalore is currently the biggest Indian market, followed by Delhi and Mumbai. Plaud's India entry is based partly on consumer research showing strong interest from Indian buyers. The company is also betting on enterprise, with its Team product already available globally. But there is little India-specific traction to point to yet.

Three days with the Note Pro

The hardware is the strongest argument for Plaud. The Note Pro is light, well built and genuinely easy to carry. It can sit inside the wallet attachment on the back of a phone, while a magnetic ring lets you carry it on compatible surfaces. Operation is simple. Long press to record, tap to highlight an important moment. The app then turns those recordings into transcripts and summaries. The transcription quality has been good in my testing, and the colour-coded conversations make the app easy to navigate.

Battery life has also been impressive. Our unit dropped from 78% to 61% over three days. With heavier use, expect to charge roughly every two days.

So, should you buy one?

This is where I am less convinced. If you really need dedicated hardware for recording conversations, the NotePin S arguably makes more sense. It stays with you, points towards the room and does not require you to pull out a phone during a meeting. But that is a niche use case. For everyone else, the smartphone remains the obvious alternative. Phones already capture audio, and AI features are rapidly making transcription and summarisation standard.

At the same time, I do agree that this is a hot category. We saw several alternatives at CES, and we have continued to see similar AI recording and wearable devices emerge in India. There is clearly a market forming around hardware that sits between humans and AI, particularly for people who spend their days in meetings, calls and conversations. Plaud's product manager also acknowledged that the category is still being figured out.

"We see smartphones and AI native hardware as two different categories," she told me. "No one in the world yet has found the right answer. We're all in the phase of exploring." And that is probably the most honest assessment of Plaud right now. The hardware works. The problem is real. The category is hot. But whether Indians need a separate device to solve it is still an open question.