Industry exhibitions and its development voice modeling companies in the Indian market suggest that there is a growing demand for voice AI solutions in the country. Voice is a popular means of communication between people and businesses in India. This is why businesses and startups are looking to use voice AI to be more effective in customer support, sales, customer acquisition, recruiting and training.
But recognizing market demand is one thing – proving that businesses will pay is another. Y Combinator rejected the application from Sicka voice orchestration startup built by Maitreya Wagh and Prateek Sachan five times before finally accepting it in the fall 2025 batch, wary that the founders could turn interest into revenue.
“When we were applying to Y Combinator, the feedback we got was, ‘It’s great to see that you have a product that can create realistic voice agents, but Indian businesses aren’t going to pay and you’re not going to make money from it,'” Wagh told TechCrunch.
The startup applied with the same idea for the fall batch, but was able to show that it had more than $25,000 in revenue every month for the past few months. At the time, the company was running a $100 pilot to help users create voice agents. Now the startup is pricing those pilots at $500.
The momentum continued. The startup said Tuesday it raised a $6.3 million seed round led by General Catalyst, with participation from Y Combinator, Blume Ventures, Orange Collective, Pioneer Fund, Transpose Capital and Eight Capital. The round also includes individual investors including Aarthi Ramamurthy, Arpan Sheth, Sriwatsan Krishnan, Ravi Iyer and Taro Fukuyama.
The product and the customers
Bolna is building an orchestration layer—essentially a platform that connects and manages different AI voice technologies—similar to startups like Vapi, LiveKit, and VoiceRun, to suit the idiosyncrasies of interactions in India, including noise cancellation, receiving verification on the Truecaller caller ID platform, and handling mixed languages.
In terms of features, the company has created specific nuances for Indian users, such as speaking numbers in English regardless of the base language or the ability to enter a keyboard for longer inputs.
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Wagh noted that Bolna’s key differentiator is that it makes it easy for users to create voice agents just by describing them, even if they don’t know much about the underlying technology and start using them for calls. The company said 75% of its revenue comes from self-service customers.
He also said that because Bolna is an orchestration layer, it doesn’t depend on a single model, so businesses can easily switch when a better model is available.
“Our platform allows customers to switch models easily or even use different models for different locales to get the best. A layer of orchestration is essential for businesses to ensure they are getting the best models because one model may be better today and another may be better tomorrow,” said Wagh.
The company has a range of clients including car resale platform Spinny, on-demand home help startup Snabbit, drinks companies and dating apps. Most of them are small to medium-sized businesses using Bolna’s self-service platform.
Separately, Bolna is pursuing major business deals. For these large enterprises and custom implementations, Bolna has a team of advanced engineers — experts who work directly with customers on site or closely with their teams. The startup has signed two large enterprises as paying customers and has four more in the pilot stage. Bolna currently employs nine engineers and adds two to three people to this team each month to support this business push.
Bolna has seen steady growth in both call volume and revenue. He says he now handles more than 200,000 calls a day and is on the verge of surpassing $700,000 in annual recurring revenue (ARR). The company noted that while 60% to 70% of call volume is in English or Hindi, other local languages are steadily increasing.
Akarsh Shrivastava, who is part of General Catalyst’s investment team, said the firm found Bolna impressive because its level of orchestration is flexible for different kinds of customers.
“Bolna allows you the freedom to choose any model and has a stack behind it to configure it according to your requirements. It’s a good choice for people who want to own part of the stack, want flexibility in choosing models, and want to be able to maintain those products themselves,” Shrivastava told TechCrunch on a call.
