Navana.ai, a homegrown voice AI startup focused on India’s linguistic diversity, has raised ₹7 crore (~$800K) in a pre-Series A round led by Antler India, with participation from prominent angels including Ajay Agarwal, Ronnie Screwvala, and Sandeep Singhal. This brings Navana’s total funding to ₹13.2 crore (~$1.5M).
Founded in 2018 by brothers Raoul and Jai Nanavati, Navana.ai has developed a proprietary speech AI stack optimized for Indian languages, dialects, low-connectivity zones, and noisy environments—where global voice models often fall short.
Its flagship products include:
- Bodhi Voicebot – a low-code builder for voice agents
- Bodhi ASR – an automatic speech recognition API for Indian languages
- Contact Center Intelligence API – helps enterprises analyze call data for fraud detection, agent monitoring, and workflow automation
Currently, the platform supports over 40 enterprise clients in banking, insurance, fintech, and more.
“Our mission is to democratize digital access—from Mumbai to remote Bihar. Our AI is built in India, for Indian speech,” said Raoul Nanavati, CEO and co-founder.
Navana’s infrastructure is cloud-agnostic, with deployment options across AWS, Azure, GCP, VPC, and on-premise—key for compliance-driven sectors like banking and telecom.
“India is a voice-first market, and global models don’t cut it here. Navana’s tech and data moat make them a standout,” said Gowri Shankar, Associate Partner at Antler India.
The fresh funds will be used to:
- Advance R&D in Indian-language speech models
- Expand product offerings
- Strengthen go-to-market execution
As India’s $50B enterprise AI opportunity unfolds by 2035, Navana.ai is positioning itself as a category-defining leader powering voice-led digital transformation across sectors.