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Equal AI raises $30M to screen calls so Indians don’t have to
In India, consumers receive a lot of calls every day, ranging from spam and scams to delivery people and financial service companies trying to contact them. There are apps like Truecaller and the government’s Calling Name Presentation (CNAP) system to identify who is calling, but knowing the name of the caller is often not enough. That is why Equal AI is creating an assistant that can receive calls on your behalf, gather information, and tell you why someone is calling.
The app is currently available on Android, and since its launch last year, it has grown to more than a million monthly active users and over 300,000 daily active users, it says. The app screens the call and displays the reason someone is calling you.
The dialer shows quick reply options like “Leave the delivery near the door” or “Give it to the neighbor,” and the AI reads them back to the caller. You can also type a custom message for the AI to read out. The app records the call, and users can see the recording and transcription history with a summary in the app.
Equal AI said today it has raised $30 million in Series B funding led by Prosus Ventures and Tomales Bay Capital with participation from Think Investments and Valiant Fund. Individual investors include Indian fintech PhonePe’s founder Sameer Nigam, Zubin Bharti Mittal from Airtel Family Office, Skyflow AI co-founder Anshu Sharma, Meta India and Southeast Asia’s VP Sandhya Devanathan, and CtrlS Datacenters’ Chairman Sridhar Pinnapureddy. With the new funding, the company has raised over $42 million to date.
The round is structured in three tranches, with the startup carrying a different valuation at each stage depending on whether it hits predetermined targets — a growing but still uncommon approach in which startups sell equity at different prices within the same round. The structure has an unusual quirk: it lets a startup advertise the highest valuation achieved, even if the bulk of the equity was sold at a lower one. Equal AI declined to provide its specific valuations.
The startup was founded by Keshav Reddy in 2022. Reddy comes from the family behind Indian conglomerate GVK, which has holdings across infrastructure, energy, and healthcare. Equal started as a data-sharing company for financial services and still offers data for financial analysis and know your customer (KYC) verification services for employers.
“We always wanted to be a customer-facing company, and with Equal AI, the first use case we launched was a call assistant because we realized users get a ton of calls for financial services or job openings. If you are buying car insurance, you might get 20 calls over a week, and that is hard to tackle for a human,” founder Reddy told TechCrunch about why the company started there.
The app currently only screens unknown calls, but the company is planning to introduce the ability to screen calls from known numbers too. The company also wants the AI assistant to take proactive action on a user’s behalf — such as texting a delivery person your address (with consent) or making outbound calls to book appointments. The startup said it is also working on an iOS version of the app and a paid subscription tier with more features.
Equal AI is using a mix of speech recognition, automatic speech recognition (ASR), and speech generation models with its own orchestration layer. English support matters, but consumers in India often speak in their native language or blend multiple languages in a single sentence — a phenomenon called code-mixing. Equal AI says it has built support for over 10 languages with this in mind.
The startup has stiff competition. Google and Apple both have call screening products. Truecaller, already a household name in India, has been building out its own AI assistant features. In the U.S., a16z-backed privacy startup Cloaked also launched call screening last year. Thiago Viana, global co-head at Prosus Ventures, said that Equal’s understanding of local context gives it an edge.
“Equal AI promises to screen calls for you and provide context on why someone is calling. We think that if an app does well in a few use cases, it can quickly become popular in its niche and create user stickiness to expand in different areas later on,” Reddy told TechCrunch by phone.
Prosus has been investing in AI assistant startups that focus on local markets. Its portfolio includes Spain-based Luzia and Latin America-based Zapia. Both were caught up in Meta’s ban on third-party AI bots on WhatsApp, which serves as a cautionary tale for platform dependency. Equal AI said that it didn’t want to create that kind of dependency — which is why it built around calls and its own app rather than piggybacking on a messaging platform.
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The Nigeria Premier Football League (NPFL) has taken a major step towards transforming the way Nigerian domestic football is watched, promoted and commercialised, with NPFL Chairman Otunba Gbenga Elegbeleye unveiling a landmark YouTube live-streaming partnership with Murphy Ben International (MBI).
The partnership, officially unveiled at a special signing ceremony, is designed to take NPFL matches directly to the screens of millions of fans through mobile phones, televisions, laptops and other internet-enabled devices, while opening a new chapter in digital broadcasting, storytelling, fan engagement and commercial development for the league.
Describing the occasion as a landmark moment for the NPFL, Elegbeleye said the partnership was the actualisation of the league’s vision to bring its matches closer to supporters wherever they may be.
For years, one question has continued to frustrate NPFL followers: “Where can we watch the NPFL?”
According to the Chairman, that question now has a loud answer.
“There will be no more excuses of ‘I didn’t see the match,’” Elegbeleye declared, announcing that fans will have access to selected live match coverage and delayed broadcasts on the official NPFL YouTube channel, free and in HD.
The agreement followed weeks of discussions between the NPFL and Murphy Ben International, including meetings in Abuja and a visit to MBI’s corporate headquarters in Lagos, as both organisations worked towards creating a digital platform capable of taking Nigerian league football to a much wider audience.
Elegbeleye said the importance of the partnership goes beyond simply broadcasting matches.
He explained that the new digital strategy will create new revenue opportunities, greater visibility and stronger commercial prospects for NPFL clubs, while providing players with a global platform to showcase their talent and giving fans the opportunity to follow their clubs from virtually anywhere in the world.
The Chairman said the NPFL identified Murphy Ben International as a partner that shares its ambition to revolutionise Nigerian domestic football and make the league globally accessible, just as Nigerian music and Nollywood have successfully taken the country’s culture to international audiences.
MBI, through its digital and technical expertise, will support the NPFL with improved production and distribution capabilities, while the partnership will also focus on telling the stories behind the league.
Speaking at the ceremony, MBI Director for Corporate Affairs Chioma Obioke said the partnership was built around a shared vision to create a wider audience for the NPFL and make the league more commercially viable.
She explained that the objective is not simply to broadcast football matches, but to celebrate Nigerian football talent and showcase the league to Nigerians at home, the Nigerian diaspora and football lovers around the world.
The MBI representative stressed that the partnership would focus on digital broadcasting, storytelling, promotion, fan engagement and commercial partnerships, creating an opportunity to tell the stories of the NPFL, its clubs, players, coaches and supporters to a much larger audience.
“This partnership is not just about the broadcasting of the matches,” she noted. “It is more also about telling, letting the world know what NPFL has been doing.”
That approach could prove particularly significant for a league that has produced generations of outstanding players and clubs but has struggled to consistently deliver its stories and matches to a global audience.
Under the new arrangement, the NPFL plans to provide live match coverage and delayed broadcasts of multiple games every matchday through its official YouTube channel.
The production will go beyond simply placing cameras around the pitch. According to Elegbeleye, fans can expect professional commentary, graphics, replays, user-generated content and behind-the-scenes material, creating a viewing experience designed to make supporters feel as though they are inside the stadium.
The Chairman also referenced the test run conducted during the final-day match in Lagos between Ikorodu City and Rangers International, which he said demonstrated the potential of the new production model.
The commercial possibilities are equally significant.
Elegbeleye said the digital platform would create opportunities for clubs to benefit from revenue generated through views, advertising and sponsorships, potentially providing another sustainable source of income while making NPFL clubs more attractive to commercial partners.
For the players, the platform could provide something equally valuable: exposure.
A talented NPFL player who previously might have been seen only by supporters inside Nigerian stadiums could now potentially be watched by fans, scouts and football stakeholders around the world.
For the supporters, meanwhile, the message from the league is simple: distance should no longer be a barrier to following Nigerian football.
From Lagos to London, Abuja to Atlanta, Enugu to Johannesburg, the NPFL is positioning itself for a future in which its matches and stories can travel wherever the internet reaches.
MBI also acknowledged the support of its Chairman, Murphy Ben, whose encouragement was described as instrumental to the project, while the NPFL delegation included members of the league’s board and management, media and operational teams.
For Elegbeleye, however, the ultimate beneficiary remains the football fan.
“And to the fans — this is for you,” he said. “The NPFL is coming to your screen.”
He concluded with a powerful declaration that perhaps best captures the significance of the new partnership:
“The future of football is digital, and the NPFL is not going to be left behind.”
With the partnership now unveiled, Nigerian domestic football is entering a potentially transformative phase—one where broadcasting, technology, storytelling and commercialisation come together to create a bigger and more accessible NPFL.
The ambition is no longer simply to play the games.
It is to take the games to the world, tell the stories behind them, grow the clubs, expose the talent and build the NPFL into a stronger commercial football brand.
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