The investment signals Aavishkaar Capital’s conviction that deep-tech innovation — built for scale, built for inclusivity, is becoming the defining lever for systemic change across the Global South

Mumbai; March 31, 2026: Aavishkaar Capital, the impact-focused fund manager and part of Aavishkaar Group, one of the world’s foremost impact investing platforms, today announced a Series B investment of USD 10 Million in Gnani.ai, a Bengaluru-based voice-first Agentic AI company redefining how enterprises engage with customers at scale. The investment marks a significant milestone in Aavishkaar Capital’s expanding deep-tech thesis — a growing conviction that frontier technology, when built with purpose, can be one of the most powerful instruments for large-scale, lasting impact across emerging markets.

Founded in 2016 by Ganesh Gopalan and Ananth Nagaraj, Gnani.ai has built India’s  leading voice AI platforms — processing over 30 million voice interactions daily in 12+ languages, for more than 200 enterprise customers, including Fortune 500 companies. Backed by Samsung Ventures and Infoedge Venture, Gnani.ai’s platform automates complex customer interactions with measurable outcomes — reducing operating costs, improving service quality, and reaching communities across languages and geographies that have historically been underserved by technology.

This capital will accelerate Gnani.ai’s global expansion, advance its generative AI capabilities, expand multilingual and industry-specific solutions, and strengthen its engineering and product talent base — positioning the company to capture a significant share of the rapidly growing enterprise voice AI market worldwide.

Speaking on this funding round, Ganesh Gopalan & Ananth Nagaraj, Co-Founders, Gnani.ai, said, “At Gnani, our mission has always been to make customer engagement more human, more secure, and more scalable through voice-first AI. Partnering with Aavishkaar Capital is a powerful validation of that vision. This investment will help us accelerate global expansion, deepen our generative AI capabilities, and continue building inclusive solutions that serve diverse communities across languages and geographies.”

Shilpa Maheshwari, Managing Director, Aavishkaar Capital, said, “Deep-tech is no longer a niche — it is becoming central to solving the defining challenges of our time: agricultural resilience, financial inclusion, climate adaptation, and equitable access to services. Gnani.ai exemplifies what we look for: a platform built with genuine technical depth, proven at scale, and with a clear pathway to meaningful impact across diverse communities. We are proud to back them at this stage of their global journey.”

This investment expands Aavishkaar Capital’s deep-tech portfolio at a moment of strategic intent. Over recent years, the firm has systematically backed entrepreneurs operating at the frontier of deep-tech, climate-tech, advanced engineering, and applied science — with a shared belief that these are not just innovation bets, but development bets. For Aavishkaar Capital, the convergence of artificial intelligence and inclusive design represents exactly the kind of transformative opportunity the firm was built to back: one that can generate strong financial returns while driving systemic change for the Global South.

About Aavishkaar Capital–

Aavishkaar Capital is an Impact fund manager focused on the Global South. A pioneer in taking an entrepreneurship-based approach to scaling businesses for impact, Aavishkaar Capital’s unique approach has resulted in its invested enterprises impacting over 140 million lives. Aavishkaar Capital invests in high environmental and social impact sectors across India, Emerging Asia, and Africa. Aligned to 13 out of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, Aavishkaar Capital has successfully raised eight funds, while generating commercial returns with over c.$555 million in assets under management. | www.aavishkaarcapital.in

About Gnani.ai-

Gnani.ai is a Tech company building India’s sovereign foundational voice and language infrastructure. The company develops its full AI stack in-house: Vachana STT for multilingual speech recognition, Vachana TTS for natural voice synthesis, a proprietary 14B parameter speech-to-speech model, and the Inya agentic platform. Inya products span workforce automation, live agent assist, voice biometrics, call quality intelligence, and avatar-based interactions. Gnani.ai serves 200+ enterprise clients across BFSI, insurance, telecom, automotive, and government, processing over 10 million calls daily. The company is one of four selected under the Government of India’s AI Mission for sovereign foundational AI development. I www.gnani.ai