Maya Research raises $1.9M to build voice AI that speaks like a local across languages

South Park Commons backed Maya Research wants to build a voice interface that speaks like a local

Maya Research is developing conversational AI models designed to speak and respond like native speakers across languages and cultural contexts, aiming to serve the next four to five billion internet users. The startup, which raised $1. For most AI companies, voice remains a layer built on top of text. Users speak, a large language model generates a response, and a text-to-speech engine reads it back. However, Bengaluru- and San Francisco-based Maya Research believes that approach misses the larger opportunity. Founded by New York University graduates Dheemanth Reddy and Bharath Kumar Kakumani in 2025, the startup is building what it calls a "voice interface for the majority of the world" - conversational AI models designed to speak, think and respond like native speakers across languages, dialects and cultural contexts. "The next four to five billion people will not use AI the way today's power users do," cofounder and chief executive Dheemanth Reddy told ET. "For them, voice is not a feature. It is how they live. The interface has to think and speak like them." The startup is entering a crowded voice AI market that includes startups including ElevenLabs and Cartesia, and Indian companies such as Gnani.ai, Skit.ai and Yellow.ai. But Reddy argues that the industry remains focused on speech generation rather than conversation itself. "Models today know how to talk, but they don't know what to talk about," said Reddy. "Humans carry hesitation, affirmation, uncertainty and emotion inside conversations. The challenge is not generating speech. The challenge is deciding what to say, when to say it and how to say it." The cofounder's comments come in the backdrop of the startup raising $1.9 million in a funding round led by South Park Commons. The company plans to use the capital to train larger conversational models, expand deployment infrastructure and deepen its understanding of how users in voice-first markets interact with AI systems. The founders' thinking was shaped by their time at NYC and under AI pioneer Yann LeCun. "One thing Yann often says is that we haven't achieved much yet," Reddy said. "People think AI has solved everything because models can generate text, but that's only a small part of intelligence." Voice in tier-II, III towns Maya operates both a model platform and a consumer application. Its models are commercially available through FAL, while its consumer app acts as a feedback loop that allows the company to observe how users interact with conversational AI across different languages and regions. The startup says its models have crossed more than 440,000 downloads on Hugging Face, while its consumer application has surpassed 3 million downloads across India, Southeast Asia and the Middle East and North Africa region. According to Reddy, Telugu-speaking users form Maya's largest market today, followed by users in Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal. The company has also seen wide usage among women discussing topics ranging from "shopping and family life to devotion and parenting." "The biggest enemy we have today is internet quality," Reddy said. "Voice experiences are extremely sensitive to latency. If the internet connection is poor, the conversation breaks." Taking on larger AI models Maya 1, its emotive voice model, currently ranks sixth globally among open-weight models on Speech Arena, a benchmark used to evaluate conversational speech systems. Maya says it is the only Indian company represented on the leaderboard. The model holds a Quality Elo score of 1,051 on Speech Arena, which the company says places it on par with OpenAI's GPT-Realtime-2. "The internet was built around English and text, which quietly left most of the world outside the interface," said Prateek Mehta, general partner at South Park Commons. "As voice becomes the way billions of people interact with technology, the company with the richest multilingual speech data and the strongest conversational models will have a defining advantage." Reddy said the company employs people to travel to villages and towns across India to record conversations and understand how people naturally speak. The company collects regional variations and dialects rather than relying on standardised language datasets. Reddy said the strategy reflects a broader belief that voice AI adoption in emerging markets will depend as much on cultural familiarity as technological capability. "We first wanted the model to speak like a local," he said. "That creates trust." On the business model, while many consumer AI companies are experimenting with subscription models Reddy said the larger opportunity lies in becoming a discovery and navigation layer that helps users access products, services and information they may not otherwise find. "There are so many things people still need to discover," he said. "Technology has to help them navigate." The company eventually expects to generate revenue by helping users discover relevant financial products, government schemes, healthcare services, commerce offerings and other digital services.

India's Voice AI Moment: Maya Research Raises $1.9M from South Park Commons to Build Voice Interface for the world

Maya Research, an AI company building Voice Interface for the Majority of the World, has raised $1.9 million in a seed round led by South Park Commons. Maya is building a voice interface for a world where billions of people interact with technology through conversation rather than typing, tapping, and navigating complex interfaces. At the core of this interface are conversational models designed to speak, think, and respond like a native speaker, adapting to local languages, contexts, and conversational nuances. While most AI products still treat voice as a microphone attached to a text system, Maya is building conversational intelligence that enables more natural interactions between people and technology. "India is not a text economy, it never was. While the conversation around AI sovereignty has focused on large language models and text interfaces, the more urgent question is: whose voice models are Indians talking to? Right now, that answer is almost entirely foreign. Maya exists to change that. We built our models frugally, on cloud credits, because we believed the problem was worth solving regardless of resources. And what we have built is already on the leaderboard. For the next five billion people, voice is not a feature. It is how they live. They will access AI through an interface that can hold a real conversation with them and understand them. That is what we are building. We want that experience to be built in India, owned in India, and available to the world from India," Dheemanth Reddy, Co-founder and CEO of Maya Research. Founded in 2025 by BS Dheemanth Reddy and Bharath Kumar Kakumani, Maya Research has crossed 440,000 model downloads on Hugging Face, amassed 3 million app downloads across India, Southeast Asia, and MENA, and become the only Indian company on Speech Arena, where its open-source voice model Maya 1 ranks among the leading open-weight models globally. Maya 1, the company's open-source emotive voice model released under Apache 2.0, holds a Ǫuality Elo of 1,051 on Speech Arena, placing it 6th among open-weight models globally and on par with OpenAI's GPT-Realtime-2. While Maya's consumer application creates a data flywheel for high-quality, hard-to-collect data, it provides a unique advantage for the company to create models faster and better, continuously. "Technology should feel magical to people. It should feel like something that belongs to them, not something foreign they have to learn. For too long, technology has alienated the majority of the world because it was never built for how they speak, think, or live. We are building models that talk like one of them, understand like one of them, and feel local from the first interaction. When technology feels native, real adoption happens," said Bharath Kumar Kakumani, Co-founder and CTO of Maya Research. "The internet was built around English and text, which quietly left most of the world outside the interface. Maya is rebuilding that interface around how people actually communicate: by speaking, in their own language. As voice becomes the way billions of people interact with technology, the company with the richest multilingual speech data and the strongest conversational models will have a defining advantage. Maya has already shown strong early proof, with over 3 million app downloads and more than 440,000 model downloads on Hugging Face," said Prateek Mehta, General Partner at South Park Commons. "AI for India will require re-imagining both the input modalities and the interfaces through which our population will access this life-changing technology. Maya is India's ChatGPT moment," said Aditya Agarwal, General Partner at South Park Commons While voice AI has made significant progress in transcription, translation, and speech generation, the challenge of building systems that can participate in natural human conversation remains largely unsolved. For Maya's founders, who grew up in the small towns of Vempalli and Ongole in Andhra Pradesh before studying at New York University, that challenge represents one of the largest opportunities in technology. As billions of people come online through voice rather than keyboards, the company believes the next breakthrough will come from systems that can listen, understand, and respond as naturally as people do.