Yellow.ai

What is Yellow.ai?

Yellow.ai is an enterprise conversational-AI platform built for customer experience (CX) and employee experience (EX) automation across chat and voice. The 2026 product surface combines a low-code agent builder, a multi-LLM orchestration layer (15+ LLMs including OpenAI GPT, Anthropic Claude, Google Gemini, and indigenous Indic models), omnichannel deployment across 35+ channels, voice / IVR support, sentiment analytics, and an "Agent Assist" co-pilot for live human agents working alongside the bots. The 2024-2026 strategic repositioning frames Yellow.ai as an autonomous AI agent platform rather than a "chatbot builder", aligning with the broader market shift.

The company was founded in 2016 in Bangalore, India by three NIT Warangal alumni: Raghu Ravinutala (CEO), who studied Communications Engineering at NIT Warangal (1996–2000) and earlier worked in semiconductor and product roles; Jaya Kishore Reddy Gollareddy (CTO); and Rashid Khan (Chief Product Officer). The founders' Indian-engineering pedigree is genuinely visible in the product — Yellow.ai is one of the very few enterprise AI platforms with first-class Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, Marathi, Kannada, Malayalam and Gujarati conversational depth out of the box, which Botpress / Voiceflow / Intercom Fin do not match. As of 28 February 2026, the company reports ~875 employees globally, though that figure is materially affected by the late-2025 layoffs (see below). The corporate HQ is now San Mateo, California, with a large Bangalore engineering centre, plus offices across SEA, Europe and the US.

Yellow.ai has raised $102.15 million across six rounds from 18 investors. The headline round is the $78.15 million Series C closed in August 2021, led by WestBridge Capital with Sapphire Ventures, Salesforce Ventures and Lightspeed Venture Partners participating. At the time, the round positioned the company as one of the most-funded Indian-founded enterprise AI startups globally. The strategic logic that worked pre-2022 — a heavyweight enterprise CX platform with strong India-language support and a global Fortune-500 customer roster — has been materially complicated by the post-ChatGPT shift in enterprise expectations, which is what drives the 2025 corporate developments described below.

The customer base across the company's history includes Indian BFSI (HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank affiliates, large NBFCs), retail (Sephora, MG Motor, Lulu Group), telecom (Vodafone, Airtel partners), travel (Indigo, AirAsia), and global Fortune-500 enterprises across the US, EU and SEA. The Indian language depth, voice-bot capability and India-region delivery are the three things customers consistently cite as differentiators against US-built competitors.

The 2025 layoffs and agentic-AI pivot — vendor-stability watch

In August 2025 Yellow.ai laid off approximately 40-50 employees, framed at the time as a normal performance-and-restructuring cycle. On 23 December 2025 the company laid off another 100+ employees, representing approximately 30% of the global workforce. The public framing was a "realignment" toward agentic AI — moving from a conversational-AI implementation-and-support model to a smaller, more specialised team building autonomous-AI-agent infrastructure. The honest reading, supported by reporting in The Ken ("Yellow.ai had $100M, clients, and momentum. Then came ChatGPT, Big Tech"), is more nuanced: the post-ChatGPT shift commoditised much of what Yellow.ai's platform offered, big-tech competition (Microsoft Copilot Studio, Google Vertex AI Agent Builder, Salesforce Agentforce, OpenAI Assistants API) made the build-vs-buy calculation worse for chatbot platforms generally, and Yellow.ai's growth trajectory needed re-baselining.

For Indian buyers evaluating Yellow.ai in 2026 the practical implications are:

• This is not a Karza-class shutdown signal — the company is funded, has an Indian-founder team that has been at this since 2016, and is actively shipping product. Existing contracts are not at imminent risk.
• It is a vendor-stability watch item for multi-year procurement — Indian banks / BFSI / large enterprises signing 3-year+ contracts should specifically negotiate M&A continuity language and data-export clauses, and should monitor whether the post-restructure team can maintain the implementation-and-support depth that legacy customers depend on.
• Greenfield evaluations should weigh the layoff signal alongside features and price — if your decision is purely on Hindi / regional depth and Indian-founder relationship, Yellow.ai remains the strongest call. If you are otherwise indifferent, the agentic-AI commoditisation argues for either building on OpenAI / Anthropic / Gemini directly, or picking Botpress (smaller but financially stable with $25M Series B June 2025) or Haptik (Reliance Jio-owned, with the Jio balance sheet behind it).

The single most important leading indicator to watch is whether Yellow.ai files a fresh funding round in 2026-2027 (and at what valuation), or pivots to an acquisition / M&A exit. Either resolution would meaningfully reset the procurement calculus.

What Yellow.ai does (the product surface)

Pricing & plans (2026)

Yellow.ai does not publish pricing publicly — contracts go through sales. Indicative 2026 ranges from third-party trackers (TrustRadius, Capterra, eesel AI) and Indian-buyer procurement disclosures:

• Starter — up to 1,000 MTUs (Monthly Tracked Users), 2 channels, basic bot builder, pre-built templates, standard analytics, community support. Typical pricing ~$100–$300/month (~₹8,500–₹25,000/month all-in). Useful for Indian SMBs evaluating the platform.
• Professional (most popular) — up to 10,000 MTUs, all 35+ channels, DynamicNLP engine, voice bot capability, advanced analytics, Salesforce integration, custom workflows, email support. Typical pricing $500–$2,000/month depending on usage and channel mix. The most-bought tier for Indian mid-market SaaS / fintech / e-commerce.
• Enterprise — unlimited MTUs, on-premises deployment option, custom SLAs, dedicated success manager, advanced security and compliance, custom integrations, 24/7 premium support. Custom pricing — typical Indian enterprise contracts cluster at ₹15-50 lakh/year for mid-large deployments, scaling to ₹1-2 crore/year for the largest BFSI / telecom buyers with voice-bot + multi-channel + Indian-language requirements.
• Setup / implementation — typically ₹3-15 lakh one-time for the bot-design, integration and training phase, depending on conversation complexity.
• AWS Marketplace — as of July 2025 Yellow.ai is available on AWS Marketplace, which gives Indian buyers an alternative procurement route via existing AWS contracts (uses AWS spend commitments).

The previous version of this page listed "₹5–20L/year" as the pricing range — that is roughly correct for the lower mid-market band but missed both the Starter tier on the low end and the much higher upper-bound for enterprise BFSI / voice-bot deployments. INR billing is available through Yellow.ai's Indian entity for India-resident customers — meaningfully easier for Indian fintech / BFSI procurement than Botpress or Voiceflow's USD-only invoicing.

When Yellow.ai is the right call

1. You need deep Hindi / regional-Indian-language conversational AI — this is by far the strongest reason to pick Yellow.ai over global alternatives. The depth in Hinglish / Tanglish / Banglish / Indic-script conversational handling is genuinely category-leading.
2. You're an Indian BFSI / telecom / utilities buyer needing voice-bot + multi-channel + IVR replacement — Yellow.ai's voice-bot capability with Indian-language native pronunciation is one of the strongest in the market. Strong fit for HDFC Bank / ICICI Bank / Bajaj Finserv / Vodafone-class buyers.
3. You want an Indian-founded vendor for procurement and relationship reasons — Raghu Ravinutala and team are Bangalore-based, IST-aligned, and Indian-enterprise sales-savvy. The procurement experience is closer to an Indian SaaS vendor than to a US-headquartered enterprise tool.
4. You're an existing Yellow.ai customer at scale — switching costs are real, and the company is shipping the agentic-AI roadmap. Stay the course unless you have a specific reason to move; renegotiate contract terms with M&A continuity language given the 2025 layoff signals.

Yellow.ai is the wrong call when: vendor stability is your #1 procurement criterion after the 2025 layoffs — consider Botpress ($25M Series B June 2025), Haptik (Reliance Jio balance sheet), or build directly on OpenAI / Anthropic / Gemini; you're a greenfield English-only SaaS without Indian-language requirements — global alternatives are usually cheaper and more battle-tested; you're a small Indian business under ₹50 lakh annual support spend — Yellow.ai's enterprise floor is too high (use Tawk.to / Crisp / Freshchat / Intercom Starter); or you want a fully no-code agent built and operated by one non-engineering person (Intercom Fin is friendlier).

Pros & cons

Alternatives

Related insights & playbooks

• Customer Support tools hub — full live comparison set
• Botpress review — engineering-led alternative
• SaaS insights hub — Indian enterprise CX automation playbook