University of Tokyo Edge Capital leads round in virtual voice agent developer Agara

Agara, which develops artificial intelligence (AI)-based autonomous voice agents focused on enterprises, has raised $4.3 million (around Rs 31.4 crore) in a pre-Series A extension funding round.

The round in New York and Bengaluru-based Agara has been led by The University of Tokyo Edge Capital Partners Co. Ltd (UTEC), the startup said in a statement. UTEC is an early-stage deep-technology venture capital firm.

Other participants in this exercise include Blume Ventures and RTP Global, both existing investors in the company. This takes the total capital raised by Agara to $7.5 million, it said.

Prior to this, the company in May 2019 raised $2.5 million (Rs 17.5 crore) from Blume and RTP Global.

Agara was set up in 2017 by Abhimanyu and Arjun Maheswaran. The company says it develops virtual voice agents that leverage its proprietary machine learning technology to understand speech dynamics and cadences, and talk with customers to help them resolve issues.

It will use the capital it has raised to accelerate product development, as well as make strategic hires in its technology division. The company says it is planning to double its team of machine learning research executives this year and establish a pure AI research team at its Bengaluru offices.

Apart from this, Agara will also use the funding to expand into markets such as the United Kingdom and Australia.

Agara says it processed over a million calls and one million emails across 12 countries and four languages last year. It is looking at increasing this engagement number to five million calls. Clients for the company include MNCs such as Procter & Gamble.