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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 World Health Organisation (WHO) has launched a new technical package containing seven proven strategies to help governments and communities prevent drowning, one of the leading causes of death among children globally.
The initiative, known by the acronym PROTECT, was unveiled ahead of World Drowning Prevention Day, observed annually on 25 July.
In a statement issued on Thursday, WHO said nearly 300,000 people die from drowning every year, making it one of the 10 leading causes of death among children aged five to 14 years worldwide.
WHO Director-General Tedros Ghebreyesus described every drowning as a preventable tragedy and urged governments to adopt practical, evidence-based measures to save lives.
Mr Ghebreyesus said preventing drowning requires coordinated action across sectors rather than the efforts of a single ministry.
“The seven measures are packaged under the acronym, PROTECT, translating the Global Strategy for Drowning Prevention into practical policy guidance for countries,” he said.
According to him, the package focuses on safer physical infrastructure around water, improved rescue and resuscitation services, occupational safety for water-related work and stronger safety standards for water transport.
It also promotes swimming and water safety education, stronger childcare and safeguarding systems, and better preparedness for floods and other emergencies.
Mr Ghebreyesus said WHO launched the PROTECT package in Ghana in recognition of the country’s growing commitment to drowning prevention and efforts to improve water safety.
He said it estimated that more than 1,100 people died from drowning annually in Ghana, equivalent to approximately three deaths every day.
READ ALSO: Nearly 2.7 billion people cannot have healthy diet – WHO
Mr Ghebreyesus said that children and young adults accounted for the highest burden.
WHO boss said that Ghana’s leadership demonstrated how evidence-based policies could reduce drowning deaths and encouraged other governments to adopt similar preventive measures.
Kelly Henning, who leads the public health programme at Bloomberg Philanthropies, said the framework would save lives, while strengthening global efforts to reduce drowning through proven interventions.
Mr Henning said that since 2014, Bloomberg Philanthropies had partnered with WHO on drowning prevention.
World Drowning Prevention Day theme, “Unite to Turn the Tide,” calls for coordinated action by governments, partners and communities to prevent drowning and save lives.
(NAN)
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