Equal AI secures $30M to screen unwanted calls for Indian consumers

Indian consumers receive a high volume of calls daily, ranging from spam and scams to delivery services and financial companies. While apps like Truecaller and the government's Calling Name Presentation (CNAP) system help identify callers, Equal AI aims to take it a step further. The company has developed an assistant that can receive calls on behalf of users, gather information, and provide the reason for the call.

The app, currently available on Android, has gained over a million monthly active users and 300,000 daily active users since its launch last year. It screens calls and displays the reason for the call, allowing users to respond with quick replies or custom messages. The app also records calls and provides a transcription history with a summary.

Equal AI has raised $30 million in Series B funding led by Prosus Ventures and Tomales Bay Capital, with participation from Think Investments and Valiant Fund. Individual investors, including PhonePe's founder Sameer Nigam and Meta India and Southeast Asia's VP Sandhya Devanathan, also contributed to the round. This brings the company's total funding to over $42 million.

The funding round is structured in three tranches, with the startup carrying a different valuation at each stage depending on whether it hits predetermined targets. Equal AI declined to provide its specific valuations. Founded by Keshav Reddy in 2022, Equal AI started as a data-sharing company for financial services and offers data for financial analysis and KYC verification services.

Reddy explained that the company decided to focus on a call assistant because users receive a large number of calls related to financial services or job openings. The app currently screens unknown calls but plans to introduce the ability to screen calls from known numbers. The company also aims to enable the AI assistant to take proactive action on users' behalf, such as texting delivery personnel or making outbound calls.

An iOS version of the app and a paid subscription tier with more features are also in development. Equal AI uses a combination of speech recognition, automatic speech recognition (ASR), and speech generation models with its own orchestration layer. The company has built support for over 10 languages, considering the phenomenon of code-mixing, where consumers in India often speak in their native language or blend multiple languages in a single sentence.

The startup faces competition from Google, Apple, and Truecaller, which also offer call screening products. However, Prosus Ventures' global co-head Thiago Viana believes that Equal AI's understanding of local context gives it an edge. Why this matters: The success of Equal AI's call screening app has significant implications for the Indian consumer tech market.