Voice AI in India: A Maturing Market and its Key Adopters

India’s digital economy has reached a turning point: the future is voice.

Certain technologies act as catalysts, fundamentally altering the terms of customer engagement and competitive advantage.

The strategic debate has decisively shifted from if Voice AI should be adopted to how rapidly it can be integrated into core business functions. India's most influential brands across banking, retail, and telecom are no longer experimenting; they are executing at scale.It’s as if a memo went out to the boardrooms of every major company, "The future is talking, and we need to be listening." The result is a massive shift. 

Across key industries, these market leaders have recognized that in a diverse, mobile-first nation, voice is not merely another channel it is rapidly becoming the definitive one for scalable customer engagement.

“Voice AI has the potential to become the most inclusive digital interface of our time. By enabling natural, spoken interactions from agriculture and healthcare to citizen services and commerce it bridges gaps of literacy, language, and access, bringing technology within reach for every Indian.”
Jagdish Babu,Chief Operating Officer, EkStep Foundation

It’s emerging as a critical enabler of India’s next wave of digital growth. Let’s explore why these leading brands are all turning up the volume on Voice AI.

Image: Voice AI Adopters in India 

The New Standard in Indian Ecommerce and Retail

In the world of instant gratification, speed and simplicity are king. The titans of Indian e-commerce and food delivery, Flipkart, Swiggy, BigBasket, and Zomato, live and die by the user experience. They know that the difference between a completed order and an abandoned cart can be just a few extra taps.

This is where voice becomes a superpower. Flipkart’s in-app multilingual voice assistant allows users to speak in Hindi or English to search products naturally, breaking down language and typing barriers.

Flipkart’s Chief Product and Technology Officer, Jeyandran Venugopal said “ While we have seen great adoption for our video and vernacular offerings, the next step in that direction is to solve the voice capability for e-commerce”.These companies are making their platforms as intuitive as talking to a shopkeeper.

It’s about closing the gap between intent and action. For a company that caters to the heart of India, this is revolutionary. It means a user more comfortable speaking Tamil or Marathi than typing in English can fully participate in the e-commerce boom.

The Transport and Logistics Sector

India is a nation in constant motion, and the companies that facilitate this movement are its arteries. From booking a train on IRCTC to scheduling deliveries via Delhivery or Porter, logistics touch every household.

A pivotal component of this ecosystem is CoRover’s AI assistant, “AskDISHA” on the IRCTC platform. In August 2022, ASkDISHA had got around 95 lakh queries, which includes booking requests, cancellation and more. Also, it had 88% positive feedback with the Al Accuracy rate of 99%.

Now upgraded with BharatGPT, the assistant enables users to not only book tickets using voice commands but also complete UPI payments conversationally in languages like Hindi, English, Hinglish, and Gujarati.

This development significantly enhances digital inclusivity, making travel booking accessible to a wider demographic, including users with limited literacy, technological experience, or those using feature phones. With this advancement, it is projected that 25% of users will switch to voice-based booking.

Adding to this vision, Rajini Hasija, CMD of IRCTC, emphasized the significance of this leap in digital inclusivity. She said “In our constant pursuit to enhance the user experience, leveraging new age technologies, we are taking a giant leap. Now a passenger can book their train ticket in a conversational manner, leveraging our AI Virtual Assistant, AskDISHA 2.0, powered by CoRover Conversational AI platform.1”

Telecom & Utilities

Telecom providers like Jio, Airtel, and Vodafone Idea serve hundreds of millions of users, each with unique needs and preferred languages. Voice AI companies like Gnani.ai and Uniphore are equipping these telecom giants with multilingual voice bots and smart IVR systems that can understand, respond to, and even detect emotion in customer queries.

Whether it’s a user asking “What’s my data balance?” or requesting a ₹299 recharge, these bots are available 24/7, in multiple Indian languages, with zero wait time.

This trend extends to the utilities space, where state power boards and water supply agencies are deploying voice bots to help with bill payments, outage updates, and meter reading guidance in local languages.

BFSI, Govt. & Public Services

Leading banks like HDFC Bank, Kotak Mahindra, and Axis Bank, and insurance providers like Bajaj Allianz are pioneering the use of voice-first channels to improve customer engagement. Launched in March, HDFC Bank's EVA has handled over 2.7 million queries from 530,000+ users, with an impressive accuracy rate of 85% and 99.9% uptime, making it one of India’s most successful banking chatbots.

Built on cutting-edge NLP and AI, EVA now manages over 50,000 semantic variations across thousands of banking intents, continuously learning from its daily interactions to improve performance. 

Government bodies like UIDAI, PM-KISAN, and local municipalities are also using IVR-based voice bots, often powered by Bhashini, Reverie, or AI4Bharat to help citizens navigate welfare schemes, documents, and subsidies.

In the Banking, Financial Services, and Insurance (BFSI) sector, voice technology is being deployed in two powerful ways: to enhance customer experience and to bolster security. On the customer experience front, an early adopter like Kotak Mahindra Bank showcases the trend perfectly with its Keya voicebot.

According to Puneet Kapoor, a Senior Executive Vice President at Kotak, this initiative was driven by customers' changing preferences and the rise of voice search online. Keya aims to deliver a superior experience by combining virtual and human assistance.

Simultaneously, on the security front, voice biometrics are gaining traction. Banks like IDFC FIRST Bank and State Bank of India are implementing this technology to improve transaction security while keeping the process user-friendly.

The Final Word

The widespread adoption of Voice AI by India's leading brands is the single biggest endorsement of the technology's power and potential. These companies are making a strategic investment in accessibility, efficiency, and emotional connection.

From cart checkouts to pension disbursements, they are wielding a powerful megaphone to ensure their services are heard, understood, and embraced by every corner of the nation.