The scale of artificial intelligence (AI) adoption will depend entirely on how well the technology interacts with people, Mati Staniszewski, chief executive officer (CEO) and co-founder of voice AI company ElevenLabs said.
“AI is increasingly intelligent, but in much of the economy, interpersonal skills matter just as much as raw reasoning power. And you need both to create incredible experiences. People should be able to interact with AI as naturally as they interact with each other, through conversation and through voice, in their language and dialect,” he said at the company’s first India Summit in Bengaluru on Tuesday.
The company is already valued at about $22 billion, double than what it was at the start of the year, backed by marquee investors such as a16z and Sequoia Capital.
London-based ElevenLabs now provides speech to text and text to speech services in 14 Indian languages and will cover all 22 official languages of the country in the next one year, as it looks to deepen its presence in what it calls its biggest market outside the US.
“if we can solve how people interact with AI here, I am confident we can solve it anywhere in the world. Our goal is to build AI that is natural, intuitive, and trusted in everyday interactions,” Staniszewski said at a packed gathering. “Sounding human is just the first step. AI also needs to listen, understand the context, respond naturally, follow guardrails, and act on intent.”
Voice AI is one of the fastest growing sectors within AI investors are pouring in millions globally. There are 153 companies in the voice AI sector across the world, with 107 funded companies having collectively raised $3.6 billion in venture capital money and private equity till August this year, according to data from Tracxn.
India is expected to be the biggest test bed and opportunity for the sector with 1.4 billion people, hundreds of millions still on feature phones, and over 100 spoken languages in active use. Nandan Nilekani, non-executive chairman Infosys and Aadhaar architect believes that voice AI is the final frontier and the only practical interface to bring in a true digital equality in India.
ElevenLabs now works with more than 250 businesses and enterprises across India which include Razorpay, TVS Motor and Urban Company. Indian businesses recorded 100 million conversations on ElevenAgents over the past year, with more than 70 percent of them in Hindi, Kannada, Tamil and Telugu.
It has already crossed $600 million revenue run rate globally and on track to have 100 employees in India
The company also partnered with Karnataka government to explore the adoption of voice AI in Kannada across areas including skilling, citizen services and grievance redressal, alongside work on responsible AI and voice restoration.
Staniszewski and Karnataka’s Minister for Information Technology and Biotechnology, Priyank Kharge, formalised the company’s first partnership with an Indian state government through an MoU with the Karnataka Innovation and Technology Society (KITS).
The partnership will explore the adoption of voice AI in Kannada across areas including skilling, citizen services and grievance redressal, alongside work on responsible AI and voice restoration.
