Nurix AI targets $10 million in annual revenue in voice-first agentic AI push

“In the last three quarters we’ve nearly doubled our revenue. October was our first revenue quarter,” Bansal told Mint in an interview. He declined to disclose Nurix’s current revenue. 

The $10 million target marks an ambitious trajectory for Bansal’s third venture. Unlike his earlier consumer-facing startups—Cultfit and Myntra, which Flipkart acquired for over $330 million in 2014—Nurix operates as a business-to-business enterprise AI platform.

“AI cannot just work out of the box. You need someone who can understand what AI is able to do, how enterprise operates and how do I make them talk to each other and get something useful done, and that is going to be a moving target,” Bansal said.

Read this | Sarvam, India’s most well-funded AI startup, takes to the Big Tech playbook

At the heart of Nurix’s pitch is agentic AI, autonomous algorithms that adapt and learn while handling specific enterprise tasks like customer service, invoicing or lead qualification.

The market for agentic AI is expected to expand sharply in coming years. Gartner forecasts that by 2029, agentic AI will handle 80% of customer service interactions, driving down operational costs by at least 30%.

US expansion

Nurix entered the US market only a quarter ago but expects business to scale quickly. “By the end of the current financial year, the revenue split between India and the US will be 50:50,” said Bansal. In India, the company serves a diverse set of customers, while its US push is concentrated on retail and insurance.

Currently, Nurix has a little over 20 customers in India, primarily in retail and insurance, which together account for 70% of its revenue. The rest comes from education, travel and healthcare. “Twelve months from now, this number of 20 customers should be over 100,” said Bansal.

For the next 12 to 18 months, Nurix plans to focus on voice-first agents, where it sees the strongest enterprise adoption. To support this, it recently launched NuPlay, a low-code platform that allows clients to configure AI agents simply by specifying the role and instructions.

Crowded field, narrow moats

The surge in agentic AI has drawn a growing number of players. 

“The space being crowded is generally a good sign that demonstrates that the market is large. If it’s a very exciting opportunity there are a lot of players, so I think by and large that is good news,” Bansal said.

Still, being a voice-first agent isn’t sufficient defensibility in an increasingly crowded field. “Enterprise is not so much about a software, it’s about how well you understand a particular enterprise and then how you’re able to make software do the work in that context,” said Bansal. To that end, Nurix is prioritizing deeper domain knowledge, particularly in retail, leveraging the sector experience of much of its team.

Several Indian startups have emerged with similar ambitions, including Plotch.ai, Kogo AI, and Atomicwork, while SaaS incumbents are adding AI agents into their offerings. Fractal Analytics, India’s first AI unicorn, is betting heavily on its agentic AI suite to drive revenue this year.

Read this | Fractal bets on agentic AI to drive revenue

In September 2024, Nurix raised $27.5 million at an undisclosed valuation in a seed-cum-Series-A round led by General Catalyst and Accel to fuel its expansion. Bansal’s own startup studio, Meraki Labs, also participated in the round.

While selling to large enterprises often involves long sales cycles, Bansal believes his consumer-tech background remains relevant. 

Also read | India’s generative AI startups look beyond building ChatGPT-like models

“All the B2C patterns are becoming very relevant [in B2B] now,” he said, citing customer obsession, precise insights and user-friendly design. “In some ways, we’re selling to enterprises, but building B2C solutions for them and they’re using our agent and putting it in front of their customers.”