Indian internet users already rely heavily on voice notes, voice search, and multilingual messaging. However, converting these habits into scalable AI businesses remains difficult due to the country’s language complexity, mixed language use, and uneven monetization patterns. Wispr Flow is betting that this opportunity is worth taking on.
The Bay Area-based startup, which develops AI-powered voice input software, says India is currently its fastest growing market, even though voice-based AI products are still in their infancy and fragmented in the South Asian country. This growth has led Wispr Flow to expand more aggressively for users in India, starting with Hinglish, a Hindi-English hybrid commonly spoken by locals. The startup also plans to offer broader multilingual audio support, drive local adoption, and eventually lower prices to expand beyond white-collar users and into Indian households.
From digital assistants to WhatsApp voice notes, the early wave of voice technology in India largely revolved around convenience. AI startups like Wispr Flow are now betting that generative AI can transform these habits into a broader computing layer.
To make the product more relevant to Indian users, Wispr Flow began beta testing the Hinglish voice model earlier this year and released it on India’s leading mobile operating system, Android, first debuting on Mac and Windows, before expanding to iOS in 2025.
Co-founder and CEO Tanay Kothari told TechCrunch that the startup initially saw adoption in India primarily among white-collar professionals such as managers and engineers, but broader usage patterns are emerging, such as students and older users passing on to younger families.
Kothari said India has emerged as Wispr Flow’s second-largest market after the U.S. in terms of both user numbers and revenue, with growth accelerating following the company’s recent India-focused efforts. The startup is experiencing faster growth after rolling out support for Hinglish, benefiting from the widespread habit of mixing Hindi and English in daily conversations among users in India, especially as users started expanding beyond work-centric use cases to more personal communications.
“The biggest thing is that people are starting to use more apps in their personal apps,” Kothari said, citing messaging platforms like WhatsApp and social media apps where users frequently switch between Hindi and English during conversations.
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Wispr Flow was growing about 60% month-over-month in India earlier this year, Kothari said, but after its recent launch campaign in India, growth accelerated to about 100%. The company launched an extensive marketing campaign in the country last month. This includes Kothari’s launch video and an offline campaign in Bangalore aimed at introducing the product to a more mainstream audience.
Kothari told TechCrunch that Wispr Flow plans to expand multilingual voice support over the next 12 months, allowing users to switch between English and other Indian languages other than Hindi during conversations. In December, the company introduced India-specific pricing of ₹320 (approximately $3.40) per month for annual plans, which is significantly lower than the global standard of $12 per month.
The startup aims to expand beyond white-collar and urban users and believes it could eventually cut costs even further, to as low as ₹10-20 (about 10-20 cents) per month.
“I want to make Wispr Flow available to everyone in this country. That’s what we’re really building,” Kothari said. “It’s going to happen slowly and steadily.”
Earlier this year, Wispr Flow hired Nimisha Mehta as head of its India operations to expand its local presence. Kothari told TechCrunch that the startup plans to grow to about 30 employees in India over the next year, building out consumer growth, partnerships and enterprise teams alongside existing engineering and support capabilities. The startup currently has approximately 60 employees worldwide.
Voice AI challenges in India
Wispr Flow is not alone in seeing India as a key market for voice-based AI products. Companies including Eleven Labs have long highlighted India as a key growth market. Similarly, local startups such as Gnani.ai, Smallest AI, and Bolna continue to attract investor interest as voice-based AI tools become widely adopted in consumer and business use cases.
Nevertheless, despite growing interest from startups and investors, it remains difficult to make voice AI a mainstream consumer product in India.
“India is the ultimate stress test for voice AI,” Neil Shah, vice president of research at Counterpoint Research, told TechCrunch, adding that “language, accent, and contextual frictions” continue to slow widespread adoption.
According to data shared with TechCrunch by Sensor Tower, Wispr Flow was downloaded more than 2.5 million times worldwide between October 2025 and April 2026, with India accounting for 14% of installs during this period, making India the second-largest market by downloads (after the US, as mentioned above). However, India contributed only about 2% of Wispr Flow’s in-app purchase revenue during the same period, according to Sensor Tower. However, the startup is still primarily desktop-driven globally.
According to Kothari, Wispr Flow usage in India is currently split roughly 50:50 between desktop and mobile, while in the U.S. it’s 80:20 mostly desktop.
Kothari said Wispr Flow has high repeat usage among users, with a retention rate of around 70% after 12 months globally and in India. Additionally, the startup currently employs two full-time Ph.D.s in linguistics and continues to refine its multilingual speech model and expand support for additional Indian language combinations.
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