Gnani ai raises $10 million from Aavishkaar Capital to scale voice AI models globally

Voice AI startup Gnani.ai has raised $10 million in a funding round led by impact investor Aavishkaar Capital, as the company looks to expand its business internationally and improve its R&D capabilities.

Founded by Ganesh Gopalan and Ananth Nagaraj, the Bengaluru-based company builds voice-first, agentic AI platforms that help enterprises automate customer interactions across languages. The startup said it currently processes over 30 million voice interactions daily in more than 12 languages and serves over 200 enterprise customers, including Fortune 500 companies.

“Customers are seeing tangible improvements in efficiency and performance,” cofounder Ganesh Gopalan told ET. He added that in the last financial year, the company added over 100 new enterprises and expects to grow faster over the next couple of years.


Gnani.ai develops its entire AI stack in-house, including speech-to-text (STT), text-to-speech (TTS), and a proprietary speech-to-speech model, along with its agentic AI platform.

The company’s portfolio spans use cases such as workforce automation, live agent assist, voice biometrics, and call intelligence across sectors such as BFSI, telecom, insurance, automotive, and government, it said in a statement.

Gnani already serves markets such as the US, Japan, the Middle East, and parts of East Asia.

Broad opportunity
On how voice AI integrates into enterprise workflows beyond customer support, Gopalan said the opportunity is much broader. “For example, in lending, we work across the entire lifecycle, from customer acquisition and onboarding to underwriting, engagement, cross-sell, and collections. Similarly, in sectors like automotive or travel, we help drive revenue, whether it’s selling cars or increasing hotel bookings.”

The cofounder added that voice AI becomes a core layer across business workflows, not just a front-end interface.

The startup is also working on new products such as avatar-based interfaces and voice cloning.

Gnani.ai counts Samsung Ventures and Info Edge Ventures among its existing backers and is one of the companies selected under the government’s India AI Mission to build sovereign foundational AI models.

Investor perspective

The fundraise comes as enterprises increasingly adopt AI-led automation tools, with voice emerging as a key interface in multilingual markets such as India and other emerging economies.

“Deeptech, especially AI, has become impossible to ignore — it is now central to how economies grow and scale,” said Shilpa Maheshwari, managing director, Aavishkaar Capital. “We see deeptech as a structural growth engine for India, and that is why we have been tracking the space closely. Gnani.ai fits well within that thesis,”

Maheshwari added that the firm will continue to evaluate AI actively, but always through an impact lens. “Today, many companies position themselves as AI-led, so the challenge is identifying those with real technological depth versus superficial positioning. That makes diligence in this space more complex,” she said.