Artificial intelligence-based voice startup Skit, previously known as Vernacular.ai, has mopped up $23 million as part of its Series B funding round led by WestBridge Capital, per an announcement.
The financing also saw participation from Kalaari Capital and Exfinity Ventures, Angelist syndicate led by Aaryaman Vir Shah from Prophetic Ventures, and LetsVenture syndicate led by Sense AI.
Skit said it will use the funds for sales & marketing, building delivery capabilities, R&D to speed up innovation and further enhance the company’s products while expanding globally.
The startup had raised about $5.1 million in Series A funding in May last year led by Exfinity Ventures and Kalaari Capital, AngelList, with IAN Fund and LetsVenture also participating in the round.
With the latest infusion, the company’s total funding stands at $30 million.
“This investment comes when we are making strategic inroads into the US and Southeast Asian markets. The global contact centre market size is expected to grow steadily and reach a value of $496 billion by 2027. To address this sizable growth, we at Skit are using voice bot innovation and our market observations to personalize caller experiences at customer contact centers, and deliver up to 50% cost reduction and superior customer experience,” said Sourabh Gupta, CEO and co-founder of Skit.
The company plans to double down and scale operations in both Indian and global markets. Since the last fundraise, Skit claims to have increased its revenue and customer growth by over 4x building a strong partner network across industries such as banking, insurance, e-commerce, consumer durables, travel & logistics, among others. The company has also strengthened its workforce by over 6x to prepare for future growth.
Founded in 2016 by IIT Roorkee graduates, Sourabh Gupta and Akshay Deshraj, Vernacular.ai provides an AI-based voice automation platform – VIVA – that helps accelerate engagement strategy, and utilise speech recognition and natural language understanding (NLU) technology to provide superior customer experiences across diverse sectors.
With the fresh funding, Skit will potentially address the over $300-billion voice customer service market globally with VIVA.
Skit was part of KStart, Kalaari Capital’s accelerator programme. It had secured an undisclosed amount in seed funding from Kstart Capital in 2017.