A recent study by Truecaller reveals that over 76% of consumers in India prefer communicating with businesses via phone calls. This insight highlights a significant opportunity for automating customer support and outreach using voice AI technologies. One such startup, Ringg, currently handling 20 million call attempts monthly, is optimistic about continued growth in this domain and has recently secured additional funding.
Ringg announced today that it has secured $10 million from Peak XV Partners as part of its Series A extension. This comes after a successful $5.5 million raise earlier this year, bringing the total for this round to $15.5 million.
Originally launched as a text-to-speech company named DesiVocal, Ringg shifted its focus to developing voice AI agents for enterprises after discovering the high costs associated with creating its own speech models. Its initial client was Indian fintech firm Cred, and it has since expanded its clientele to include notable startups like Flipkart, Practo, Groww, and PolicyBazaar.
Co-founder Siddharth Tripathi recently shared with TechCrunch that Ringg began by addressing high-volume, low-complexity activities such as outbound calling and loan collections. However, it recognized that these tasks are not sustainable long-term as they often boil down to price competition.
To enhance its offerings, Ringg is now focusing on more intricate processes, such as facilitating appointment bookings for healthcare settings, recovering abandoned shopping carts for e-commerce platforms, and conducting onboarding/KYC checks for financial applications.
According to Tripathi, Ringg’s voice agents are currently operational at 1,200 clinics via the healthcare app Practo, assisting patients with appointment scheduling and follow-up communications.
While voice calls continue to represent over 70% of Ringg's business, the company is exploring other communication channels like chat and WhatsApp. For clients such as Shell, it is also automating online support inquiries.
Tripathi emphasized that Ringg aims to be recognized not just as a voice agent provider, but as a platform that delivers tangible outcomes and efficient task completion for enterprises.
The majority of Ringg's clients are located in India, though it has some presence in the Middle East and the U.S. However, the startup is not focused on direct sales to American companies; instead, it aims to collaborate with Global Capability Centers in India, which serve as back-office support for multinationals, to provide a combination of automation solutions and human expertise.
The company is developing its own speech recognition and generation technologies, with aspirations to manage the entire voice stack, including its infrastructure. For the time being, however, it operates as an orchestration layer that delegates tasks to various models based on specific use cases.
Rishen Kapoor, a principal at Peak XV, noted that Ringg benefits from its origins as a research lab, allowing it to tackle complex enterprise workflows efficiently and consistently.
The Indian voice AI landscape is becoming increasingly competitive, with various model developers such as Deepgram, ElevenLabs, Cartesia, and local firms like Sarvam and Smallest.ai contending for market share. Additionally, orchestration-focused startups like Bolna and Blue Machines are pursuing similar goals as Ringg, while niche companies such as Gnani and Arrowhead specialize in finance.
In this dynamic environment, the key to success lies in retaining customer relationships and delivering outcomes, which ultimately defines market positioning.
Currently, Ringg employs 40 people and has onboarded over 15 new employees in the past three months. The startup is looking to hire engineers with a blend of technical and product management skills, as well as researchers dedicated to optimizing the cost-efficiency of its operations.
