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The CDME perspective

India’s Fuel for Scale: Conversational AI’s Vernacular Opportunity

Rohit Haldankar
By Rohit Haldankar March 20, 2026

Let’s talk about Conversational AI and what it would take to drive deeper penetration of this tech for businesses and consumers across India.

Conversational AI is a form of AI that simulates human conversation.

The field of Conversation Design lies at its core. It uses Natural Language Processing (NLP) to understand and process human language. It also uses Machine Learning (ML) to keep getting better as more data is fed into it.

Conversational AI has use-cases in the following areas:

  • Paid Social Conversational Advertising - used by Tata Motors, Jeep, Renault and some more brands in their Click-to-WhatsApp ads

  • Chatbots to Drive Sales - Indigo sells flight tickets using this

  • Text-based Customer Support - used by Amazon, Zomato, Swiggy and many more brands to address post-sales customer queries

  • Voice-based Customer Support - no widespread adoption yet, but that could change in the years to come

  • Virtual Assistants - Siri, Alexa and Google Assistant have used it for quite a few years

In short, this tech is powerful. Its power stems from how useful it is for businesses to drive revenue and save cost.

If brands that operate at scale in India wish to drive more revenue and save more cost, Conversational AI systems will need to have the capacity to support vernacular languages.

I can tell from my work in this area that the focus has been on developing systems centered around the English language.

That needs to change for the Indian market. After all, the fuel for scale here often comes from lands that speak Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Hindi, Gujarati and so many of our wonderful languages.