In India, the prevalence of daily calls from various sources—including spam, scams, delivery services, and financial institutions—has become a significant challenge for consumers. While existing solutions like Truecaller and the government’s Calling Name Presentation (CNAP) system provide caller identification, they often fall short in conveying the purpose behind these calls. Addressing this gap, Equal AI has developed an assistant designed to answer calls on behalf of users, gather pertinent information, and relay the caller’s intent.
Launched last year on the Android platform, Equal AI’s app has rapidly gained traction, boasting over a million monthly active users and more than 300,000 daily active users. The application screens incoming calls and displays the reason for the call, offering users quick reply options such as “Leave the delivery near the door” or “Give it to the neighbor,” which the AI communicates to the caller. Additionally, users can input custom messages for the AI to convey. The app records these interactions, providing users with access to call recordings, transcriptions, and summaries within the app.
Recently, Equal AI announced a successful Series B funding round, raising $30 million. The round was led by Prosus Ventures and Tomales Bay Capital, with contributions from Think Investments and Valiant Fund. Notable individual investors include Sameer Nigam, founder of Indian fintech PhonePe; Zubin Bharti Mittal from Airtel Family Office; Anshu Sharma, co-founder of Skyflow AI; Sandhya Devanathan, Meta’s VP for India and Southeast Asia; and Sridhar Pinnapureddy, Chairman of CtrlS Datacenters. This latest funding brings Equal AI’s total capital raised to over $42 million.
The funding round is structured in three tranches, each with varying valuations contingent upon the startup achieving specific targets—a relatively uncommon approach that allows the company to highlight the highest valuation attained, even if the majority of equity was sold at a lower valuation. Equal AI has chosen not to disclose the specific valuations associated with each tranche.
Founded in 2022 by Keshav Reddy, a member of the family behind the Indian conglomerate GVK, Equal AI initially focused on data-sharing services for financial institutions, offering data for financial analysis and know-your-customer (KYC) verification. The shift towards a consumer-facing call assistant was driven by the recognition of the overwhelming number of calls individuals receive related to financial services and job opportunities. For instance, purchasing car insurance might result in numerous calls over a week, posing a challenge for individuals to manage effectively.
Currently, the app screens only unknown calls, but plans are underway to extend this functionality to known numbers. Future developments include enabling the AI assistant to perform proactive actions on behalf of users, such as sending delivery instructions or making outbound calls to schedule appointments. An iOS version of the app and a premium subscription tier with additional features are also in the pipeline.
Equal AI employs a combination of speech recognition, automatic speech recognition (ASR), and speech generation models, integrated through its proprietary orchestration layer. Recognizing the linguistic diversity in India, where code-mixing—blending multiple languages within a single sentence—is common, the company has developed support for over ten languages to cater to this phenomenon.
The call screening market is competitive, with major players like Google and Apple offering similar products. Truecaller, a well-established name in India, has also been enhancing its AI assistant capabilities. Despite this, Equal AI’s deep understanding of the local context provides a competitive edge. The company’s approach focuses on building its own app and infrastructure, avoiding dependency on third-party messaging platforms, which has been a challenge for other AI assistant startups.
Equal AI’s innovative approach to call management addresses a significant pain point for Indian consumers inundated with daily calls. By leveraging advanced AI technologies and a keen understanding of local linguistic nuances, the company is well-positioned to redefine how individuals handle incoming calls. The substantial funding and strategic development plans signal a promising trajectory for Equal AI in the evolving landscape of AI-driven communication solutions.
