Equal AI secured $30 million to filter phone calls for Indians who receive an average of 20 spam calls each week.

      TL;DR: Equal AI secured $30 million from Prosus to manage phone calls in India. The AI in the app responds to calls, inquires about the reason for the call, and provides a summary for users. It boasts over 1 million monthly users.

      Equal AI, an Indian startup that developed an AI assistant for handling phone calls, has obtained $30 million in a Series B funding round led by Prosus Ventures and Tomales Bay Capital. Other contributors included Think Investments and Valiant Fund, as well as individual investors like Sameer Nigam, founder of PhonePe, and Sandhya Devanathan, VP at Meta for India and Southeast Asia. With this round, total funding has surpassed $42 million.

      The challenge is significant; Indian consumers face a constant barrage of calls from delivery couriers, insurance brokers, financial firms, scammers, and recruiters. "If you are purchasing car insurance, you may receive up to 20 calls in a week, which can be overwhelming for an individual," said founder Keshav Reddy in an interview with TechCrunch.

      The Android application from Equal AI screens unidentified calls by using an AI agent that answers and asks for the caller's intent. It displays a summary of the reason on the screen, along with quick response options such as "Leave the delivery at the door" or "Give it to the neighbor." The AI then narrates the selected response back to the caller. Users also have the option to type custom messages. Each call is recorded, with transcriptions and summaries accessible in the app.

      Since its launch last year, the app has attracted over one million monthly active users and more than 300,000 daily active users. The company supports more than 10 Indian languages, including code-mixing, a common practice of integrating multiple languages in one sentence, as English alone isn’t sufficient for the Indian audience.

      The funding round features an unusual structure, divided into three tranches, with each tranche being valued differently based on the startup meeting certain predetermined milestones. This approach, though increasingly popular, remains uncommon and allows a startup to promote a higher valuation even if most shares were issued at a lower price. Equal AI chose not to disclose its exact valuations.

      Founded in 2022 by Reddy, who hails from the family behind the Indian conglomerate GVK, with interests in infrastructure, energy, and healthcare, Equal AI initially operated as a data-sharing firm for financial services. It continues to provide KYC verification and financial data analysis alongside its consumer application.

      The competitive landscape is tough. Both Google and Apple offer call screening solutions, and Truecaller, a familiar name in India with hundreds of millions of users, is developing its own AI assistant capabilities. In the US, the a16z-backed Cloaked introduced its call screening feature last year. Thiago Viana from Prosus mentioned that Equal AI’s understanding of local context gives it a competitive advantage.

      Future plans include screening calls from known contacts, making outbound calls for users to book appointments, developing an iOS version, and introducing a paid subscription model. Prosus has invested in AI assistants tailored for local markets, such as Spain’s Luzia and Latin America’s Zapia, both of which faced challenges due to Meta’s restrictions on third-party AI bots on WhatsApp. This is why Equal AI focused on call management and its own application instead of relying on a messaging platform. The takeaway: dependence on a platform can jeopardize distribution.