Bolna AI: How Is Voice AI Enabling India’s Next Billion?

Bolna AI is a Bengaluru-based startup dedicated to transforming how Indian enterprises communicate at scale. Founded in 2025 and supported by Y Combinator’s Fall 2025 batch, Bolna is tackling one of the most critical challenges in India’s digital economy: voice.

In India, voice calls remain the backbone of business operations. Banks use them for loan recovery, e-commerce companies rely on them for delivery confirmations, and recruitment agencies conduct countless candidate screening calls daily. Despite digital apps and chat platforms, voice calls are still the most reliable, inclusive, and culturally relevant channel for engaging millions of people across different regions.

Bolna was created with this reality in mind. Its Voice AI Orchestration platform is designed specifically for Indian enterprises, giving them the tools to automate calls with multilingual, realistic Voice AI agents. With Bolna, businesses no longer need to build massive human call centers or manually integrate dozens of different AI models. Instead, they get a ready-to-scale, cost-efficient solution tailored to India’s linguistic and cultural diversity.

Why is the voice call system in India broken today?

Despite its dominance, India’s call-based ecosystem faces deep challenges:

1. Linguistic Complexity – India has over 20 official languages and hundreds of dialects. A single conversation can switch mid-sentence from Hindi to Hinglish to Gujarati, requiring fluid, adaptive language handling. No single human team or one-size-fits-all AI model can manage this at scale.
2. Contextual Requirements – Not every call is the same. A delivery driver in Bengaluru needs real-time low-latency Kannada support with strong noise cancellation, while a recruitment call to a software engineer demands nuanced reasoning in English or Hindi. Enterprises struggle with managing dozens of models that fit different needs.
3. Cost Efficiency at Scale – India is an extremely cost-sensitive market. Building large human teams is expensive, while deploying advanced AI models without optimization is not affordable. Companies need ways to balance quality with cost-efficiency, which requires smart routing, caching, and workflow design.

These issues make scaling call operations in India an enormous challenge, leaving businesses with inefficiencies, high costs, and poor customer experiences.

How does Bolna AI solve these challenges?

Bolna AI addresses these structural issues through a comprehensive Voice AI orchestration approach:

• Enterprise-Grade Performance – Bolna delivers sub-500ms latency, advanced interruption handling, and smooth adaptation across more than 10 languages and 50+ accents. It can follow natural mixed-language conversations like Hinglish or Tamil-English seamlessly.
• India-Specific Routing – Instead of relying on a single AI model, Bolna intelligently blends multiple models and chooses the optimal one based on language, region, and use case. This ensures businesses always get the right balance of speed, quality, and accuracy.
• Cost-Efficiency Engine – To ensure affordability, Bolna integrates pre-recorded inserts for repetitive utterances, leverages smaller vertical-focused models where possible, and applies routing logic that minimizes token usage while maximizing ROI.
• Full Enterprise Control – Unlike closed AI systems, Bolna allows enterprises to design their own workflows, define tone and voice, and maintain control over intelligence parameters. This ensures brand consistency and compliance with industry regulations.

By combining these features, Bolna enables enterprises to scale thousands of concurrent calls within days rather than months. Today, the platform is already powering more than 500,000 minutes of automated calls per month across BFSI, e-commerce, and recruitment sectors.

Who are the founders behind Bolna AI?

Bolna was co-founded by Prateek Sachan and Maitreya Wagh, two entrepreneurs with strong backgrounds in scaling technology solutions.

• Prateek Sachan – With prior experience at leading companies such as Zomato, Tata 1MG, BrowserStack, and Atlassian, Prateek has firsthand expertise in building and scaling high-growth platforms. His mission is clear: to create the Voice AI infrastructure that enables India’s next billion people to connect with businesses seamlessly.
• Maitreya Wagh – Maitreya’s career path took him from engineering to consulting, and finally to entrepreneurship. His technical depth and strategic mindset drive Bolna’s orchestration-first approach. Outside of work, he is passionate about sports and travel, embodying the energy and resilience needed to build in India’s dynamic market.

Together, they bring a combination of engineering expertise, business acumen, and a deep understanding of India’s unique communication challenges.

Why is voice AI so critical for Indian enterprises?

India is home to more than 1.4 billion people, with vast differences in language, literacy, and digital adoption. While text-based chatbots work in many global markets, they face limitations in India where literacy levels and smartphone access vary widely. Voice remains the most natural and accessible mode of communication.

For enterprises, this means voice automation is not optional—it is mission-critical. Whether confirming a delivery in rural Bihar or conducting a loan repayment reminder in urban Bengaluru, businesses need scalable, multilingual voice solutions that work across demographics.

Bolna’s Voice AI gives enterprises the ability to:

• Expand reach across regions without hiring thousands of agents.
• Deliver personalized customer experiences by adapting to accents and language switches.
• Save operational costs while maintaining service quality.
• Scale faster by deploying AI agents directly from transcripts and FAQs, without needing months of training or custom development.

How does Bolna stand out compared to global Voice AI solutions?

While there are many global players in AI voice technology, most solutions are not designed for India’s unique needs. Global systems often assume English or limited multilingual capability, high bandwidth connections, and Western-style workflows.

Bolna is different because it is built for India first. Its platform is optimized for:

• Multi-language and multi-accent adaptation – Beyond just language recognition, Bolna handles the fluidity of switching languages mid-sentence.
• Low-latency performance – Designed for India’s mobile-first, bandwidth-variable environment.
• Cost-sensitive routing – Built with efficiency mechanisms that align with India’s rupee-conscious markets.
• Scalable orchestration – Instead of forcing companies to integrate multiple AI vendors, Bolna acts as the orchestrator that manages everything behind the scenes.

This India-first design ensures enterprises can achieve results that global systems often fail to deliver.

What industries are already using Bolna AI?

Bolna AI has quickly found adoption across several high-volume industries:

• Banking, Financial Services & Insurance (BFSI) – Automating loan recovery calls, fraud checks, and customer support.
• E-commerce & Logistics – Handling delivery confirmations, COD verifications, and returns coordination.
• Recruitment & HR – Pre-screening candidates, conducting initial qualification calls, and reducing recruiter workload.

Across these sectors, companies using Bolna report higher pickup rates, lower costs, and faster go-live times compared to traditional human teams or alternative automation tools.

What is the vision for Bolna AI’s future?

Bolna’s vision extends beyond simply automating calls—it is about empowering India’s next billion people with accessible, intelligent voice experiences. By removing the friction of language, accent, and cost, Bolna aims to be the default infrastructure layer for voice communication across Indian enterprises.

As adoption grows, the company plans to expand further into vertical-specific solutions, support more regional languages and dialects, and scale its orchestration capabilities to handle tens of millions of calls daily. Its goal is to ensure that every Indian business, regardless of size, can communicate effectively with its customers through AI-powered voice.

How is Bolna redefining the future of voice communication in India?

Bolna represents a paradigm shift in how enterprises approach voice operations. Instead of seeing call centers as a sunk cost, businesses can now treat voice as a scalable, flexible, and intelligent channel. With its orchestration-first model, Bolna not only automates calls but also ensures enterprises retain control over experience, cost, and performance.

In a country where voice remains the lifeline of commerce and service, Bolna AI is unlocking a future where businesses can scale profitably while customers enjoy seamless, personalized, and language-inclusive interactions. For India’s next billion, Bolna is more than a tool—it is the voice of accessibility, efficiency, and growth.