Bengaluru-based voice AI startup Arrowhead
has raised $3 Mn (INR 27 Cr) funding in its seed round led by early-stage focussed VC firm Stellaris Venture Partners.
The round also saw participation from CRED’s founder Kunal Shah, M2P Fintech’s cofounder Madhusudanan R, among other senior executives from fintech firms like Turtlemint and Kissht.
This is the startup’s first institutional funding round. Arrowhead had earlier raised a small pre-seed round of around $20K. While the startup has both India and US entities, it operates largely out of India.
Founded by Devyani Gupta and Vengadanathan Srinivasan in 2022, Arrowhead is an AI startup that builds and deploys voice AI agents that aid the sales functions for banks, NBFCs as well as fintech companies.
These AI agents handle end-to-end sales and service calls, often running for up to 20 minutes, without customers realising they are speaking to an AI bot.
The startup said the fresh capital will be used mainly for hiring and technology development. It is also worth noting that the startup is rapidly expanding its team across engineering, data science, customer success, and new customer acquisition roles.
Its second focus area is building a deeper tech differentiation for its bots by fine-tuning its AI model in-house and expanding its product beyond basic voice automation.
Arrowhead operates across three core BFSI segments — lending, insurance and securities. While its bots are used for loan sales and collections for lending, their use case for the insurance segment is handling health, life and motor insurance sales as well as renewals. For securities, the startup works on use cases such as mutual funds and fixed deposit sales.
According to the startup, its voice AI agents deliver up to 45% higher conversion rates than human agents. These bots handle complex calls that involve explaining policy details, coverages and exclusions, often referencing policy documents that can run into 20 pages. These bots are able to conduct long conversations without breaking flow or compliance, which has allowed some clients to displace human agents entirely.
A key part of Arrowhead’s product is its support for Indian regional languages. The bots currently operate in Hindi, English, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada and Bengali, and can switch languages mid-call.
This, the startup said, helps reduce customer drop-offs that typically happen when a human agent cannot communicate efficiently in a customer’s preferred language.
On the business side, the startup claims to have grown its revenue by 4X over the last few months, driven by a rise in go-live contracts. While it did not disclose absolute numbers, the startup expects demand for voice AI in BFSI to grow sharply over the next 6–12 months as banks and fintechs start treating AI-led calling as a baseline requirement rather than an optional add-on.
It currently claims to work with over 50 BFSI clients, including Bank of Baroda Cards, Aditya Birla Capital, Paytm, Turtlemint, Kissht, InsuranceDekho and others.
Beyond India, Arrowhead operates in Southeast Asia and has active deployments with a large bank and a collections firm in Malaysia. While India remains its main market, the startup plans to expand further across Southeast Asia and the Middle East over the next year.
The investor interest for Arrowhead comes at a time when voice agents have gained more fervour across businesses in 2025. In the previous year, these agents moved from basic IVR and scripted bots to systems that could handle long, natural conversations with minimal human support.
For these agents, BFSI saw the strongest traction. Banks, NBFCs and insurers have now begun using voice agents to replace large calling teams, improve reach and drive higher conversions.
Some of the notable funding rounds include Giga’s $61 Mn and smallest.ai’s $8 Mn round late last year.
