lot of talk on india X the last two days about voice agent companies and their pricing.
we started building this in 2023, before any of it was consensus. so we’ve watched a few turns of this cycle already.
my view: ₹2 or ₹1 is inconsequential in the long run.
(And also limits from using the most powerful stack and so outcomes generally suck)
the framing itself is wrong.
the promise of ai was never fewer people on the payroll.
it’s outsized outcomes.
and outsized outcomes don’t come from running the same process on cheaper tech. they come from rethinking how you serve the customer.
building a voice agent isn’t hard anymore. there’s real money in the low complexity minutes.
lead qualification, collections, reminders. that market is large and it’s getting taken.
the harder thing is a memory and action layer sitting on top of the apis companies already spent years building.
agents that consume, convert and retain using that context that’s what kills the old cost of building and maintaining products.
so cost plus, and whether per minute goes to zero, makes for fun discourse.
the actual question is how you change the way a business serves its end customers.
that answer won’t be cost plus.
it’ll be revenue first.
long way to go. we’re on innings 0 of voice + action agents.
if done right, it will changes what a good p&l looks like.
only a few companies will adopt agents in a way that creates meaningful outcomes. Those companies will keep gaining market share.
the rest may not remain relevant.