Key facts
- Equal AI has raised $30 million in Series B funding.
- The company's AI assistant screens calls, providing context on why someone is calling.
- The app currently has over 1 million monthly active users and 300,000 daily active users.
- Funding was led by Prosus Ventures and Tomales Bay Capital, with participation from Think Investments and Valiant Fund.
- The startup plans to expand features to include screening known numbers and making outbound calls.
Equal AI, an AI startup focused on managing the high volume of daily calls in India, has raised $30 million in Series B funding. The company's AI assistant screens incoming calls, identifies the caller's purpose, and can relay pre-set or custom responses, aiming to reduce the burden on users. The app, available on Android, has garnered over a million monthly active users since its launch last year.
The funding round was led by Prosus Ventures and Tomales Bay Capital, with participation from Think Investments and Valiant Fund. This brings the company's total funding to over $42 million. The round's unique structure involves different valuations based on predetermined targets.
Founded in 2022 by Keshav Reddy, whose family is behind the Indian conglomerate GVK, Equal AI initially focused on data-sharing for financial services. The call assistant was the first customer-facing product, addressing the deluge of calls related to financial services and job openings.
Equal AI plans to enhance its service by enabling the screening of known numbers, allowing the AI to take proactive actions like texting addresses with consent, and making outbound calls for appointment booking. An iOS version and a premium subscription tier are also in development.
The company utilizes speech recognition, ASR, and speech generation models, with a focus on supporting over 10 languages and handling code-mixing, a common linguistic phenomenon in India. Equal AI faces competition from Google, Apple, and Truecaller, but Prosus Ventures believes Equal AI's understanding of local context provides a competitive edge.