AI Startup Funding Alert

Stellaris leads $3m seed round in Indian voice AI firm Arrowhead

By StartupStory | January 13, 2026

Bengaluru-based voice AI startup Arrowhead has raised $3 million in seed funding led by Stellaris Venture Partners, marking a strong early validation for its ultra-human sales agents targeting India’s $3 billion financial services market.

The round drew notable participation from fintech heavyweights including CRED founder Kunal Shah, M2P Fintech’s Madhusudanan R, Turtlemint’s Keyur Rajiv Kashikar, and Kissht executives Pramod Mohandas and Shadab Shamim – all existing Arrowhead customers betting on the platform’s sales transformation potential.

Voice AI That Closes Complex Deals

Founded in 2024 by Devyani Gupta and Vengadanathan Srinivasan, Arrowhead builds conversational AI agents that handle 20-minute+ sales calls end-to-end – from lead qualification and product walkthroughs to objection handling and deal closure. Unlike basic chatbots, these agents replicate top-performing human sales reps through context-aware dialogue, natural interruptions, and emotion detection.

The startup targets BFSI institutions needing to scale outbound customer outreach amid rising loan demand and insurance penetration. Banks, NBFCs, and fintechs use Arrowhead to automate credit card upsells, personal loan offers, term insurance pitches, and wealth product cross-sells – driving 2-3x conversion lifts over manual calling.

Clients include Aditya Birla Capital, Paytm, InsuranceDekho, and 50+ others across India and Southeast Asia. The platform has graduated from pilots to production-scale deployments, processing thousands of daily conversations.

Funds Fuel AI + Team Expansion

The capital will strengthen Arrowhead’s core speech-to-speech models, hire engineering talent, and scale go-to-market teams across key markets. Near-term priorities include:

Emotion-aware agents: Real-time sentiment analysis to adapt tone and pacing during objections.
Omnichannel platform: Seamless transitions between voice calls, WhatsApp, SMS, and web chat.
Sales outcome optimisation: ML-driven A/B testing of scripts, timing, and follow-up cadences.

Stellaris Principal Vardhan Dharnidharka highlighted the massive greenfield opportunity: “Voice AI represents less than $50M of India’s $3B BFSI sales market. Banks now have top-down AI mandates accelerating adoption at unprecedented speed.”

Timing India’s Voice-First Revolution

Arrowhead rides three convergences:

BFSI digitisation: Loan disbursals hit ₹25 lakh crore annually; insurers eye 50% digital premiums.
Voice dominance: 80%+ Indians prefer phone conversations for financial decisions over apps.
AI maturity: Dropping inference costs enable real-time, human-parity conversations.

Competitors focus on inbound support; Arrowhead owns outbound sales – the highest-value, hardest-to-automate frontier. Early traction with tier-1 brands validates product-market fit ahead of Series A.

Path to Unicorn Potential

With first institutional capital, Arrowhead eyes 10x revenue growth in 18 months through deeper wallet share and geographic expansion. Success could redefine sales infrastructure for India’s $200B+ financial services sector, where human agents cost ₹15-20 lakh/year each.

Stellaris’ early bet – alongside customer-founders – positions Arrowhead to capture the next wave of AI-driven GTM transformation sweeping enterprise India.

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