Welcome to The AI Shift by Inc42, our all-new newsletter that delves deep into the world of artificial intelligence, LLMs, big tech giants and the major trends sweeping the Indian startup and tech ecosystem. Here’s the second edition; do send us your feedback and suggestions so we can improve as we go along!

Indians did not learn to engage with technology because of AI. We have been doing it for years. Long before smartphones, dashboards, and mobile apps were the norm, we engaged with technology through customer support, IVRS, and call centres. Speaking, not typing, was how things really worked back then.

However, as technology grew its influence, the nation’s digital ecosystem began to be built around text. For a country like India, with several language barriers and varying literacy levels, this is a problem — and it did take its toll. Unlike more advanced nations, tech adoption became a challenge, as text-heavy, English-first interfaces made it difficult for millions of users to understand how to interact with digital systems.

Fast forward to 2026, India’s tryst with tech stands at an interesting point, especially when voice and AI have come together to make digital systems more accessible and better aligned with how people naturally communicate.

From government initiatives like Bhashini, which aims to reduce language barriers through voice, to AI startups building Indic LLMs and speech models that understand the nuances of Indian languages, this shift cannot be more profound.

But as voice moves from habit to infrastructure, the bigger question is who is building it, where it is being applied, and what problems it is actually solving. Let’s find out in this week’s edition of The AI Shift.

Voice AI Takes Centre Stage

Currently, the global voice AI startup landscape is being dominated by names like ElevenLabs, Deepgram, Wispr Flow and AssemblyAI, which are enabling voice-driven workflows by building text-to-speech (TTS) and speech-to-text (STT) models and voice cloning.

The country’s voice AI ecosystem is evolving with startups such as Gnani.ai, which has launched Vachana STT, a foundational Indic speech-to-text model; Sarvam, which is building sovereign multilingual voice and LLM infrastructure; and Smallest.ai, which is focussed on delivering responsive, scalable TTS and voice systems. CoRover.ai is powering conversational AI bots, while Oriserve is building enterprise voice AI agents for a range of business use cases.

What this really means is that voice is being designed as the primary interface rather than an accessibility layer, especially for high-frequency, real-world interactions.

For Akshat Mandloi, the cofounder and CTO of Smallest.ai, voice feels inevitable because it mirrors how humans naturally communicate.

“Voice comes as a natural modality or natural mode of communication, and most people prefer explaining problems verbally rather than structuring them for software.”

This shift is already reshaping how commerce happens.

As Mathangi Sri Ramachandran, cofounder and CEO of YuVerse, puts it, “Voice is a revolution at this point. India is getting completely into conversational commerce, and that’s becoming mainstream commerce.”

She pointed out that voice is no longer restricted to support or reminders, and a lot of business tasks – from reminding the customer to pay to exposing them to a product, upsell, and cross-sell – are already happening on voice.

For Anurag Jain, founder and CEO of Oriserve, voice clearly outperforms apps and text in customer-facing situations where discovery, urgency, or emotion is involved. “This is especially true in areas like collections, insurance servicing, and support,” he said.

He added that even digitally fluent users revert to conversation when friction rises. While tier I users are comfortable with apps due to muscle memory, they prefer calling when exploring something new because apps create a high cognitive load, leading to drop-offs.

However, what surprises Jain is how people frequently switch languages mid-sentence, rely on context rather than structure, and expect systems to keep up. This is precisely where the next big opportunity lies.

Besides, voice AI is lowering the cost of building tech for India’s fragmented, multilingual market. Traditionally, startups either limited themselves to a few regions or invested heavily in localisation,........

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