Summary
- Navana.ai launched Bodhi TTS with 50+ voices across 10 Indian languages, priced at ₹12 per 10,000 characters.
- The model is roughly one-eighth the cost of ElevenLabs and 60% cheaper than Sarvam AI’s Bulbul v3.
- Banks and lenders can apply for early access, with the first 100 approved teams getting 100 hours of free usage.
Most voice bots in India still sound like they learned Hindi from a textbook. Navana.ai thinks it has fixed that, and it’s betting the price will get people to notice.
The Mumbai-based company opened public access to Bodhi TTS this week, a text-to-speech model built specifically for real-time Indian voice AI. It ships with more than 50 natively Indian voices across 10 languages, Hindi, Telugu, Tamil, Marathi, Bengali, Odia, Malayalam, Kannada, English, and Gujarati, all at one flat price of ₹12 per 10,000 characters, or about ₹0.72 per minute of generated speech.
That pricing is the headline. Navana.ai says it works out to roughly one-eighth of what ElevenLabs charges and about 60% less than Sarvam AI’s Bulbul v3, though those comparisons come from the company itself rather than an independent benchmark. Still, for a country where voice bots run at enormous call volumes, that gap matters more than it would in a market where TTS is a nice-to-have.
Navana.ai isn’t a new player pitching a demo. The company already handles more than 100 million conversations for Indian banks and lenders, and Bodhi models reportedly sit behind voice agents supporting over ₹1,000 crore in monthly loan disbursals across its banking and lending clients. That track record is likely why the company is positioning Bodhi TTS as infrastructure for regulated industries rather than just another consumer-facing voice tool.
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What makes it different isn’t just the price
Getting Indian speech right is harder than it sounds. A model can nail conversational Hindi and still stumble the moment a customer’s loan EMI, PAN number, or account balance comes up. Bodhi TTS reads that Indian-specific text natively, so ₹1,00,000 comes out as “one lakh rupees,” not a string of digits read one at a time. It also handles phone numbers, dates, and scheme names the way a bank employee actually says them.
Co-founder and CEO Raoul Nanavati said the model was built “to represent every accent” so businesses get fine-grained control over how their bots sound from day one. Co-founder Jai Nanavati made a related point about how the model was engineered: Bodhi TTS is about five times smaller than the nearest comparable model, which the company says is what makes both the low pricing and on-premise deployment possible.
That size matters for a specific reason: Bodhi TTS can run inside a bank’s own data centre. For regulated businesses, that means customer audio and transcripts never have to leave the enterprise’s own security perimeter, a detail that will likely carry more weight with BFSI compliance teams than the price tag does. Navana.ai is ISO 27001 and SOC 2 Type II certified.
The model also supports zero-shot voice cloning, meaning a business can create a custom voice from a few seconds of reference audio through the API, with no retraining and no added latency on calls since the reference audio gets cached.
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Where this fits in India’s voice AI race
Navana.ai isn’t building in a vacuum. Sarvam AI, which raised $41 million in its Series A to build a homegrown model supporting reasoning in Indian languages, has staked out similar ground with a voice-first design. Ola’s Krutrim has taken a different angle with Kruti, its agentic assistant available in 11+ Indian languages that acts on tasks like booking cabs, rather than focusing purely on speech quality and pricing.
Read More: Krutrim’s Bold Leap: Unveiling Its Agentic AI Assistant Kruti
What sets Navana.ai apart from both is the enterprise-first, regulated-industry pitch. It isn’t chasing consumer mindshare. It’s chasing every bank, insurer, and NBFC in India that currently pays a premium for voice AI that doesn’t quite get the Marathi customer right, and it’s using price as the wedge to get there.
Bodhi TTS is live now at platform.navana.ai, with ₹1,000 in free credits for anyone who signs up. Banks, insurers, and lenders can apply for early access to both Bodhi TTS and its sibling model, Bodhi STT, which opened by invitation the same day, with the first 100 approved teams getting 100 hours of usage credits valid for 90 days.
For founders building anything voice-facing in Indian languages, from D2C support bots to fintech IVR systems, this is worth testing early. If the pricing holds up at scale the way Navana.ai claims, it could reset what “affordable” voice AI looks like for Indian companies that have so far had to choose between accented global models and a bill that only made sense for a pilot.
Got a voice AI product built for Indian languages, or thoughts on whether sovereign pricing like this actually holds up past the pilot stage? Drop it in the comments, we’re tracking this space closely.
FAQs
What is Bodhi TTS?
Bodhi TTS is a text-to-speech voice AI model from Navana.ai, built specifically for real-time Indian voice applications with more than 50 natively Indian voices across 10 languages.
How much does Bodhi TTS cost?
It’s priced at ₹12 per 10,000 characters, roughly ₹0.72 per minute of generated speech, which Navana.ai says is about one-eighth of ElevenLabs’ pricing and 60% below Sarvam AI’s Bulbul v3.
Which languages does Bodhi TTS support?
Hindi, Telugu, Tamil, Marathi, Bengali, Odia, Malayalam, Kannada, English, and Gujarati.
Who is behind Navana.ai?
Navana.ai was founded by Raoul Nanavati and Jai Nanavati, and already powers voice AI for Indian banks and lenders, handling over 100 million conversations to date.
Can Bodhi TTS run on a company’s own servers?
Yes. Because the model is around five times smaller than comparable architectures, it can run inside an enterprise’s own data centre, keeping customer data within its security perimeter.
How can businesses access Bodhi TTS?
It’s open to everyone at platform.navana.ai with ₹1,000 in free signup credits. Banks, insurers, and lenders can also apply for early access with additional usage credits.
