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India has become the largest user market for ElevenLabs, a US-based voice-first GenAI startup, with Hindi ranking among the top three languages, according to Siddharth Srinivasan, the go-to-market leader for India at ElevenLabs.
The AI audio company, valued at $3.3 billion and supported by Silicon Valley venture capital firms a16z and Sequoia, selected India for its first international expansion in September of last year. The company is focusing on localizing language content, Srinivasan informed Media.
With over 145 million users, India is a voice-first market that will continue to drive the growth of voice input. Additionally, the country is projected to have more than 100 million podcast listeners in the next two years. By 2030, AI agents are anticipated to represent a $500 million opportunity, he added.
“When the company expanded out of the West, they looked at a couple of must win markets – Japan and India, and India was their first international expansion, and I’ve come in to help drive that chapter,” said the former YouTube executive who joined as ElevenLabs’ India lead in September.
“We have millions of users and India, which is now our highest user market (of paying enterprises and individuals) and Hindi is among the top three languages for us, in terms of content being generated on ElevenLabs. Since about November to now, that usage has grown about 50% already.”
When asked about competition from big tech giants like Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Srinivasan said it can only be tackled by continuously investing in core research. “Speech (as a product) has existed for over 10 years now. We (ElevenLabs) are not even the inventors of the space. But what we can do is continue to drive research.”
He explained competition in the LLM space. “Every half hour, it seems like, when I get on a flight, someone has the biggest model in the world, when I land, someone else has. But at the same time, ChatGPT has 300 million users. Because you need to have great research at all times. The second part is having a great product. I think the third part is companies win and die by their go-to market.”
Srinivasan recognized the issue of voice deepfakes created by AI, suggesting that it can be managed through three key safety principles: moderation, accountability, and provenance. He emphasized the importance of audio watermarking to identify AI-generated content and the necessity for ongoing monitoring. Additionally, he mentioned the prohibition of certain “no-go” voices, particularly those of public figures, on the platform.
When asked whether video or audio deepfakes create more distrust among people, Srinivasan noted that the two are interconnected and cannot be easily distinguished. He stated that the level of concern is subjective.
Regarding the potential threat AI poses to voice artists, Srinivasan argued that the technology can actually create more opportunities and improve their efficiency rather than replace them. He pointed out that ElevenLabs is facilitating a voice marketplace that allows artists to monetize their talents.
Content creators are the number one category of users for ElevenLabs, number two is voice artists, he said. “We have a voice marketplace where people of their own choice come in and distribute their voice in a licensed regime, where they’re paid fairly.”
The Company aims to ship inclusive products to serve India’s diverse local needs. Its speech-to-text AI model Scribe, which has outperformed global benchmarks for use-cases like transcription, addresses 11 Indian languages including the lesser data corpus language like Assamese, Srinivasan said.
“Our CEO, Mati (Staniszewski), and our CTO, Piotr (Dabkowski), the cofounders; their vision is to have a confederation of states. They keep articulating to us that ElevenLabs must be a global and a local company in terms of research, resources, and values. We are really building an India-first business with India-first set of priorities as we navigate this,” he said.
ElevenLabs lists Star Labs, the research and development division of Star Sports, among its major clients for producing cricket content in various languages. The company also collaborates with audio-focused platforms such as Pocket FM and Kuku FM, the edutech startup Supernova, and conversational AI firms like Convin and Vodex.
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