Equal AI Secures $30M to Automate Call Screening in India

Equal AI, the startup behind a popular call-screening assistant, has secured $30 million in Series B funding. The investment round, which brings the company’s total capital raised to over $42 million, aims to bolster its technology for managing the high volume of unsolicited and essential calls faced by Indian consumers.

The financing was led by Prosus Ventures and Tomales Bay Capital, with additional backing from Think Investments and Valiant Fund. Several high-profile individual investors also participated, including PhonePe founder Sameer Nigam, Airtel Family Office’s Zubin Bharti Mittal, and Meta India and Southeast Asia VP Sandhya Devanathan.

The startup’s mobile app, currently available on Android, acts as a digital intermediary that answers incoming calls on behalf of the user. By utilizing speech recognition and generation models, the assistant identifies the intent behind a call, transcribes the conversation, and provides users with a summary of why the caller reached out.

Solving the Spam Call Challenge

Founded in 2022 by Keshav Reddy, the company initially focused on data sharing for financial services and KYC verification. However, the team identified a significant market gap in personal communication management. “We realized users get a ton of calls for financial services or job openings,” Reddy explained. “If you are buying car insurance, you might get 20 calls over a week, and that is hard to tackle for a human.”

The app offers several features designed to reduce the burden of manual call management:

• Quick Replies: Users can select pre-set responses, such as asking a delivery person to leave a package at the door, which the AI reads to the caller.
• Custom Messaging: Users can type bespoke messages for the AI to relay during the call.
• Transcript History: Every interaction is recorded, transcribed, and summarized within the application.

Multilingual Support and Future Roadmap

A key differentiator for Equal AI is its handling of “code-mixing,” a common linguistic phenomenon in India where speakers blend multiple languages within a single sentence. The platform currently supports over 10 languages, leveraging a custom orchestration layer to manage its speech models.

The company reports rapid adoption, with over one million monthly active users and 300,000 daily active users since its launch last year. Looking ahead, the firm plans to expand its capabilities significantly:

• Expanded Screening: Moving beyond unknown numbers to screen calls from known contacts.
• Proactive AI: Enabling the assistant to perform tasks like booking appointments or providing location details to delivery personnel.
• Platform Expansion: Developing an iOS version and introducing a tiered, paid subscription model.

While tech giants like Google and Apple offer native call-screening features, and platforms like Truecaller are actively integrating AI assistants, Thiago Viana of Prosus Ventures believes Equal AI’s focus on local context provides a distinct competitive advantage. Unlike other AI assistants that rely on third-party messaging platforms—which can be vulnerable to policy changes—Equal AI has built its service around the native dialer, ensuring greater independence.