Deeptech startup Vaani AI Research has raised $400,000 in a pre-seed funding round, led by Venture Catalysts with participation from several global operators and industry veterans.
The fresh capital will be used to strengthen Vaani’s voice technology stack, advance its R&D efforts, and accelerate enterprise adoption.
The company also plans to expand partnerships across India, the GCC region, and international markets while scaling its infrastructure.
Founded in 2024 by Tushar Shinde, Nitesh Tripathi, and Nitish Mishra, Vaani AI combines research depth from IISc and IIT-Madras with over a decade of experience in AI and infrastructure building.
Positioning itself as the “Stripe for Voice AI”, the startup is developing plug-and-play infrastructure with APIs, SDKs, and enterprise-ready models that enable BPOs, developers, and enterprises to launch multilingual, human-like voice agents within days.
Vaani AI is part of the Google for Startups AI Accelerator 2025 and NASSCOM’s GenAI Foundry, and has been recognized among the Top 10 AI Infrastructure Companies globally by F6S.
The firm is also building an advanced text-to-speech model designed to surpass benchmarks in naturalness, emotion, and resonance, setting new standards for conversational AI.
