Bolna has secured $6.3 million from General Catalyst for its India-focused voice distribution platform

Industry reports and growth of voice modeling companies in the Indian market indicate that there is a growing demand for voice AI solutions in the country. Voice is a popular way of communication between people and businesses in India. That’s why companies and startups are keen to use voice AI to be more efficient in customer support, sales, customer acquisition, recruiting, and training.

But recognizing market demand is one thing, proving that companies will pay is another. Y Combinator rejected the application from Bolna, an audio orchestration startup founded by Maitreya Wagh and Prateek Sachan, five times before finally accepting it for the fall 2025 batch, doubting the founders’ ability to convert interest into revenue.

“When we applied for Y-Combinator, the feedback we received was: ‘It’s great to see that you have a product that can create realistic voice agents, but Indian companies won’t pay, they won’t make money on this,’” Wagh told TechCrunch.

The startup applied the same idea to its fall batch but was able to show that it generated more than $25,000 in revenue per month over the past few months. At the time, the company was running $100 shareware to help users create voice agents. Now, the startup is pricing these pilots at $500.

And the momentum continued. The startup said Tuesday it has raised a $6.3 million seed round led by General Catalyst, with participation from Y Combinator, Blume Ventures, Orange Collective, Pioneer Fund, Transpose Capital, and Eight Capital. The round also includes retail investors, including Aarthi Ramamurthy, Arpan Sheth, Sriwatsan Krishnan, Ravi Iyer and Taru Vukuyam.

Product and customers

Bolna is building an orchestration layer — essentially a platform that connects and manages different AI-powered voice technologies — similar to startups like Vapi, LiveKit, and VoiceRun, to suit the specifics of interactions in India, including noise cancellation, getting verification from the Truecaller caller ID platform, and handling mixed languages.

Feature-wise, the company has built in specific nuances for Indian users, such as speaking numbers in English regardless of the primary language, or allowing keyboard input for longer inputs.

Wagh noted that the main difference between Bolna is that it makes it easy for users to create voice clients once they’re described, even if they don’t know much about the underlying technology, and start using them to make calls. The company said that 75% of its revenue comes from self-service customers.

He also said that because Bolna is an orchestration layer, it doesn’t rely on a single model, so companies can easily switch when there’s a better model available.

“Our platform allows customers to easily switch models or even use different models for different sites to get the best results. The orchestration layer is essential for organizations to ensure they have the best models because one model can be better today and another model can be better tomorrow,” said Wagh.

The company has a range of clients including car resale platform Spinny, on-demand home help startup Snapbit, drinks companies and dating apps. Most of these small to medium sized businesses use Bolna’s self-service platform.

Separately, Polna is pursuing major business deals. For these large organizations and custom applications, Bolna has a team of future-deployed engineers – specialists who work directly with customers on site or closely with their teams. The startup has signed up two major companies as paying clients and has four more companies in the beta phase. Currently, Bolna is hiring nine futures deployment engineers and adding two to three people to this team each month to support this enterprise push.

Bolna has seen steady growth in both call volume and revenue. It now handles more than 200,000 calls per day and is on the cusp of surpassing $700,000 in annual recurring revenue (ARR). The company noted that while 60-70% of call volume is in English or Hindi, other regional languages ​​are steadily on the rise.

Akarsh Shrivastava, part of the investment team at General Catalyst, said the company found Bolna impressive because its orchestration layer is flexible to different types of clients.

“Bolna gives you the freedom to choose any model and has a kit behind it to mold it to your requirements. It’s a good option for people who want to own part of the kit, want flexibility in choosing models, and want to be able to maintain these products themselves,” Shrivastava told TechCrunch over a phone call.