Equal AI Raises $30M to Transform Call Screening in India
In India, consumers face a flood of calls daily. Now, Equal AI is stepping up with an innovative call assistant that screens and contextualizes incoming calls.
Admin User
India's call landscape can be overwhelming, with spam, scams, delivery people, and financial service companies constantly reaching out to users. To tackle this challenge,
New Funding and Growth
The startup recently secured $30 million in Series B funding led by Prosus Ventures and Tomales Bay Capital. Other investors include Think Investments, Valiant Fund, individual investors such as Sameer Nigam (founder of PhonePe), Zubin Bharti Mittal from Airtel Family Office, Anshu Sharma from Skyflow AI, Meta’s Sandhya Devanathan, and Sridhar Pinnapureddy from CtrlS Datacenters. With this round, Equal AI has raised over $42 million to date.
How It Works
The app screens calls on your behalf, displaying the reason someone is calling you. Quick reply options like 'Leave the delivery near the door' or 'Give it to the neighbor' are available, and you can also type custom messages for the AI to read out loud. Call recordings and transcriptions are stored within the app for easy reference.
Key Features
- Data Sharing: Equal AI started as a data-sharing company for financial services and still offers data for KYC verification services for employers.
- Languages Supported: The app supports over 10 languages, accounting for the unique phenomenon of code-mixing in India where consumers often blend multiple languages in a single sentence.
- Paid Subscription: Equal AI is also developing a paid subscription tier with additional features and is working on an iOS version of the app.
Competitors
The market for call screening apps is competitive, with players like Google, Apple, Truecaller, and Cloaked already established. However, Equal AI’s founder, Keshav Reddy, believes that understanding local context gives them an edge. 'We always wanted to be a customer-facing company, and with Equal AI, the first use case we launched was a call assistant because we realized users get a ton of calls for financial services or job openings,' he explains.
Future Plans
In addition to enhancing their existing features, Equal AI aims to introduce call screening from known numbers. They also plan to have the AI take proactive actions on behalf of the user—such as texting a delivery person your address (with consent) or making outbound calls to book appointments.
