Navana.ai
Category: Voice / Speech AI
Bengaluru-based sovereign voice AI company building end-to-end multilingual speech models and AI contact center solutions for India's regulated enterprises, primarily BFSI. Navana.ai was founded in 2018. The company is led by Raoul Nanavati. Based in Bengaluru, Karnataka, India. Team size: 11-50. Total funding raised: $5.7M. Latest round: Series A. Key investors include Ronnie Screwvala, Antler India, Sharad Sanghi, Sandeep Singhal, Paula Mariwala, Ajay Agarwal, Fireside Ventures.
- Founded
- 2018
- Headquarters
- Bengaluru, Karnataka, India
- Team size
- 11-50
- Total funding
- $5.7M
Value proposition
Democratize access to digital services for every Indian by delivering enterprise-grade voice AI in 12 Indian languages and 45 dialects, engineered for pan-India scale, complexity, and regulatory compliance (RBI, ISO 27001, SOC 2 Type II, data localization).
Products and solutions
Bodhi (proprietary speech models in 12 Indian languages / 45 dialects), AI Contact Center (end-to-end telephony voice agent platform), Bodhi Speech API, Audio Intelligence API (batch transcripts, call summaries, performance insights).
Unique value
Sovereign, on-prem deployable voice AI purpose-built for Indian linguistic reality — handles noise, overlapping speech, code-switching, and regional accents with the highest benchmarked accuracy, plus full data control and regulatory compliance.
Target customer
Regulated Indian enterprises, primarily BFSI (banks, financial institutions, insurance, housing finance) plus other large enterprises needing multilingual voice automation.
Industries served
Banking, Financial Institutions, Insurance (BFSI), broader regulated enterprise sector.
Technology advantage
Proprietary Bodhi speech models trained on hundreds of thousands of real-world Indian conversations across 12 languages and 45 dialects; on-prem architecture for data control; ISO 27001 & SOC 2 Type II compliance; open-sourced RESPIN (10,000-hour Indic speech corpus) with IISc.
How they differentiate
Differentiates on sovereign/on-prem deployment for regulated enterprises, deep dialectal coverage (45 dialects), and compliance-first positioning (RBI, ISO 27001, SOC 2) versus more generalized or cloud-first Indic voice AI platforms.
Main competitors
Sarvam AI, Skit.ai, Gnani.ai, Yellow.ai
Key partnerships
IISc Bengaluru, IIT Madras, Microsoft Research, Gates Foundation (open-source speech collaborations).
Notable customers
Bajaj Finserv, Protean, Ujjivan Small Finance Bank, Jana Small Finance Bank, Grihum Housing Finance
Major milestones
Founded 2018, pre-Series A ₹7 Cr led by Antler India (Jul 2025), Series A ₹40 Cr led by Ronnie Screwvala (Sep 2026), open-sourced RESPIN Indic speech corpus with IISc.
Growth metrics
Serviced 100M+ voice AI minutes; 900M+ Indians covered; 40+ clients; 1.5M+ users via Hello Ujjivan partnership.
Market positioning
Positioned as India's sovereign voice AI infrastructure for regulated enterprises, with a strong BFSI focus and claims of highest accuracy in real-world Indic speech benchmarking.
Geographic focus
India (pan-India focus, 900M+ Indians covered across urban and rural); competes against both Indian Indic-voice startups and global voice AI players.
Patents and IP
Open-sourced RESPIN, a 10,000-hour speech corpus spanning 45 dialects (with IISc Bengaluru) — one of the largest openly available Indic speech datasets.
About Raoul Nanavati
Ex-CEO & Co-founder of BYOF Studios (mobile gaming); Head of Product Strategy at WOI (Western Outdoor Interactive); Cornell Tech MBA '18; BA Political Science & Economics, McGill University, Canada.
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Official website: https://www.navana.ai
