Industry report and the growth of sound modeling company in the Indian market showing that there is demand for voice AI solutions in the country. Voice is a popular medium for communication between people and businesses in India. That’s why companies and startups are eager to use voice AI to be more efficient in customer support, sales, customer acquisition, hiring, and training.
But understanding market demand is one thing – proving the business will pay is another. Y Combinator rejects applications from painfulthe beginning of the sound orchestration was built by Maitreya Wagh and Prateek Sachan, five times before finally accepting to the fall of 2025 the group, doubting that the founder could turn interest into revenue.
“When we applied to Y-Combinator, the feedback we received was, ‘it’s great that you have a product that can create a realistic voice agent, but Indian companies won’t pay for it, and you won’t make any money from this,'” Wagh told TechCrunch.
The startup applied the same idea to the fall collection but was able to show that it earned more than $25,000 per month in the past few months. At the time, the company ran a $100 pilot to help users create voice agents. Currently, the pilot’s starting price is $500.
The momentum has continued. The startup said on Tuesday that it has raised a $6.3M 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 included individual investors, including Arthi Ramamurthy, Arpan Sheth, Sriwatsan Krishnan, Ravi Iyer, and Taro Fukuyam.
Products and customers
Bolna is building an orchestration layer — essentially a platform that connects and orchestrates various AI sound technologies — similar to startups like Vapi, LiveKit, and VoiceRunto match the idiosyncrasies of interactions in India, including noise cancellation, taking verification on the Truecaller platform’s caller ID, and handling mixed languages.
Feature-wise, the company has built certain nuances for Indian users, such as numbers spoken in English regardless of the core language, or allowing for keypad input to input again.
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Wagh notes that the key differentiation of Bolna is that it is easy for users to create a voice agent by simply explaining it, even if they do not know the basic technology, and start using it for the phone. The company says 75% of its revenue comes from self-serve customers.
He also said that Bolna is an orchestration layer, so it doesn’t rely on a single model, so companies can easily switch when a better model becomes available.
“Our platform allows customers to easily switch models or even use different models for different locales to get the best. The orchestration layer is necessary for companies to ensure that they get the best model because one model can be better today and another can be better tomorrow,” said Wagh.
The company has a variety of clients including car resale platform Spinny, an on-demand home assistance startup Fastbeverage companies, and dating apps. Most of these are small to mid-sized businesses using Bolna’s self-service platform.
Separately, Bolna pursued the offer of a large company. For large companies and these special implementations, Bolna has a team of advanced engineers – specialists who work directly with the client on site or close to the team. The startup has signed on two large companies as paying customers and has four more in the pilot phase. Currently, Bolna employs nine advanced engineers and adds two to three people to the team every month to support this company’s push.
Bolna has experienced steady growth in call volume and revenue. It currently handles over 200,000 calls per day and is on the verge of crossing $700,000 in annual recurring revenue (ARR). The company notes that 60-70% of call volume is in English or Hindi, other regional languages are on the rise.
Akarsh Shrivastava, who is part of the investment team at General Catalyst, said the firm found Bolna impressive because of its flexible orchestration layer for various customers.
“Bolna allows you the freedom to choose any model and have a stack behind to print it according to the requirement. It is a good option for people who want to have several parts of the stack, want flexibility in the model they take, and want to be able to maintain the product itself,” said Shrivastava TechCrunch by phone.