Indian voice automation startup bags $23m in series B round

India-based voice automation startup Skit, previously known as Vernacular.ai, has secured US$23 million as part of its series B funding to fuel the company’s growth and product development.

Team Skit/ Photo credit: Skit

The investment was led by WestBridge Capital with participation from existing investors Kalaari Capital and Exfinity Ventures, among others.

“The fresh capital will help enhance Skit’s voice technology, developing personalized solutions while making strategic headway in the US,” Skit co-founder and CEO Sourabh Gupta told Tech in Asia. The company also plans to scale its operations in India and global markets.

Skit offers a suite of speech and language solutions that allow enterprises to automate their call center operations. With over 10 million hours of training data, its flagship product, Vernacular Intelligent Voice Assistant (Viva), can respond to customer queries in over 16 languages and replicate human-like conversations. The startup aims to tap into the US$300 billion global voice customer service market with Viva.

Skit currently serves a variety of enterprise clients across sectors such as banking and financial services, food and beverage, ecommerce, and travel and tourism.

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With Covid-19 accelerating automation efforts across industries, Skit says it has been able to increase its revenue and customer growth by over 4x since May last year. The new funding brings the company’s total amount raised to US$30 million to date.