India is no longer just a large market for global AI firms. It is becoming a key force in shaping how voice AI is built, tested and governed worldwide. Speaking on the sidelines of the AI Impact Summit 2026, Alex Haskell, general counsel and head of global affairs at ElevenLabs, said India plays a central role in the company’s global strategy.
For ElevenLabs, India was always a priority. “We grew up as a global company from day one,” Haskell explained. “Given that the company was founded on the belief that all information and all content should be accessible to everybody, India was such a natural place that our co founders, Mati Staniszewski CEO and Piotr Dąbkowski CTO, felt the technology could make an impact.” He added that the founders’ experience of growing up in Poland without access to content in their native language shaped this vision. India’s scale is already driving impact. E commerce platform Meesho processes 60000 calls daily using ElevenLabs’ voice AI. This demand has helped the company build stronger, safe and reliable infrastructure that benefits customers globally. The company also developed solutions in India to handle code switching between English and Hindi, especially among tier 2 and tier 3 users, improving its global products.
As generative AI faces scrutiny, ElevenLabs says safety is central to its growth. “We do not view safeguards, guardrails and the safety measures that we need to have in place to serve our customers as in conflict with innovation or company growth,” Haskell said. The company uses multiple safeguards, including a No Go Voices feature that blocks cloning of celebrities and politicians. “There are many platforms out there that offer voice cloning where you could clone PM Modi’s voice, but not on ElevenLabs. Not possible. It could never happen at all,” he stated. The restricted list is updated almost daily. “You just cannot wait for a country to tell you to do X and be safe, or do Y and not be safe,” he added, while noting that staying 100% compliant with changing global regulations is his biggest daily focus. He called for uniform and stable regulations.
Haskell believes India can lead global AI governance. “India is such an important and powerful market that if you’re a company like us, you want to be in India,” he said, adding that compliance with Indian rules will shape global technology standards. He also highlighted the company’s Impact Program, which offers free voice restoration tools to people who have lost their voice due to illness or accident. With ongoing research and new releases like the V3 Expressive Mode model, ElevenLabs aims to make voice AI more valuable for users in India and across the world.
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