There’s a quiet revolution happening in the most unglamorous part of enterprise operations: the call center. And a Mumbai-born startup is leading the charge, not with chatbots or scripted IVRs, but with voice AI agents built for the most complex, high-stakes sectors. Rifa AI, co-founded by IIT Bombay alumni Sameer Fulzele and Shubham Khoker, has just raised $1.1 million to bring its conversational AI platform to North America. The round is led by Seaborne Capital, with support from ecosystem giants like NASSCOM and FalconX.
At a time when “generative AI” is mostly being discussed in terms of chat, image, and text, Rifa AI is going after the most unforgiving frontier of automation: voice. And not just casual voice, voice in regulated industries like healthcare, insurance, and financial services, where compliance isn’t optional and every misstep can have legal consequences.
From Mumbai to Main Street, USA
Rifa’s ambition is clear: become the voice automation layer for enterprise workflows in sectors that have traditionally required human involvement. Whether it’s scheduling an appointment with a healthcare provider, handling first notice of loss (FNOL) for insurance, or reminding customers about debt repayments, Rifa AI’s platform does it all, through highly intelligent, policy-aware voice agents. And it’s already doing this at scale. The platform has processed over 3 million minutes of voice conversations and claims to reduce human call volume by up to 70%, while autonomously resolving 60% of queries end-to-end.
Now, the fresh capital will be used to expand aggressively into North America, both as a customer market and as a proving ground for enterprise-grade automation. “Voice AI in regulated industries isn’t just about understanding speech. It’s about making sure the responses align with policy constraints and regulatory frameworks,” says Sameer Fulzele. “We built for complexity from day one.”
Scaling Compliant AI in High-Stakes Environments
What makes Rifa interesting is its architecture. Instead of just training a large model on call transcripts, the platform combines structured decision trees, backend APIs, and policy-based workflows with advanced voice AI. This allows Rifa to not only respond like a human, but also think like a compliance officer. In sectors where HIPAA and TCPA rules dictate everything from what can be said to how often you can call a customer, that’s non-negotiable.
Its voice agents don’t just talk, they schedule, escalate, record, and integrate. They plug into existing CRMs, ERPs, and telephony systems, making them a drop-in solution rather than a rip-and-replace product. And that’s why Rifa is already being used by insurers, underwriters, and debt collection agencies in the U.S.
Backing from the Ecosystem
Rifa AI isn’t just scaling, it’s stacking the deck. The startup is a part of the FalconX Global Immersion Program, which connects Indian deep-tech companies with enterprise customers in Silicon Valley. It is also backed by NASSCOM’s GenAI Startup Foundry and will soon participate in the IIT Build Accelerator supported by Foundation Capital, a top-tier VC firm in the U.S.
For Seaborne Capital, the lead investor in this round, the bet on Rifa is about market timing and category depth. As regulatory complexity and labor shortages grow, enterprises are hungry for intelligent automation that goes beyond chat widgets. Voice, though technically harder, offers a more powerful interface for transactional processes, and a moat that generic LLMs can’t easily cross.
“Expanding into North America has always been part of our vision, not just as a market, but as a stress test for our tech,” says co-founder Shubham Khoker. “We’re here to prove that voice AI can be both deeply compliant and remarkably scalable.”
Why It Matters
Voice automation has long been a holy grail for enterprises, but most attempts have focused on low-risk customer support. Rifa AI is turning that model on its head, starting with the riskiest, most regulation-heavy sectors. If it succeeds, it won’t just reduce call center costs, it will redefine how trust, automation, and compliance coexist in enterprise operations.
At RizingTV, we’re tracking the rise of enterprise-grade GenAI closely. Startups like Rifa AI aren’t just building cool tech, they’re quietly embedding themselves into the infrastructure of how companies work. And that, in our book, is worth paying attention to.
