[Funding] Virtual Voice Agent startup Agara raises $4.3M led by UTEC

Agara is a startup that aims to build next-gen virtual voice agents for enterprises. The startup today announced a $4.3 million Pre-Series A extension round led by UTEC. UTEC is a Japan-based early-stage deep-tech venture capital firm. The round also saw the participation of existing investors Blume Ventures and RTP Global. The fundraise brings the total to $7.5M. It also included bluechip investors Kleiner Perkins.

The company will use the funds to accelerate product development. The company also aims to make a number of strategic hires in Agara’s technology department. Further, it plans to grow the sales and marketing team in North America. The company aslo plans to double its team of ML research executives and data scientists in 2021. In 2021, it also aims to establish its first pure AI research team at Bangalore.

About Agara

Abhimanyu and Arjun Maheswaran founded Agara in 2017. The startup develops industry-leading virtual voice agents that leverage proprietary machine learning models to understand intentions in speech. It can also make intelligent decisions to handle queries and talk individual customers through to a resolution. The startup have 6 patents in less that 4 years.

The ML and AI-based system patents have been developed by Agara’s team to help its voice agents understand, classify and summarize to language. For instance, one of their patents in ‘Controlled Natural Language Generation’. It allows their voice agents to create meaningful dialogues without any human intervention.

From the leaders

Abhimanyu, Co-founder and CEO of Agara said, “Whether it is sales calls, phone support or product feedback, voice has been the top choice for companies around the globe. We strive to be pioneer in voice-first world. With the new Covid norms, we expect the demand for virtual voice agents rise manifold. Last year, we processed over a million calls and a million emails in 12 countries across every continent in 4 languages. With the new surge in demand, we are confident of increasing this number to over 5 million calls.”

Kiran Mysore, Principal at UTEC adds that the company is a deep-tech fund. And Agara’s autonomous Voice AI agent powered by voice-first Applied ML algorithms and real-world data impressed them. “Agara’s product-led growth puts them in the pole position to be a category-defining enterprise Voice AI company. We aim to supplement Agara through client and Go- to-market partnerships with Japanese MNCs,” he said.

Sanjay Nath at Blume Ventures also expressed his delight to support Agara. He further thinks/believes that name can become synonymous with autonomous voice. He said. “Autonomous voice has applications beyond customer support and can stretch across industries and functions. We at Blume believe the day isn’t very far where autonomous voice agents will be ubiquitous. The Agara team has showcased tremendous deeptech expertise in building a cutting edge product that has been validated by the likes of P&G.”