If you are building a voice feature for Indian users, Sarvam AI and ElevenLabs both come up. They overlap, but their strengths differ.
At a glance
- Sarvam AI is an Indian company built around Indian languages. Its products include speech to text, text to speech, translation and a language model, Sarvam-M.
- ElevenLabs is a global voice AI company known for natural voices. It offers text to speech, speech to text, dubbing and an agents platform for voice agents.
How to decide
- Which languages and dialects do you need? List them, then test each vendor on real samples. Support claims on a website are not a test.
- Is it a feature or a full agent? For a voice inside your app, building blocks are enough. For phone agents, check the platform and telephony options.
- Voice quality. Play samples to real users, including in noisy settings.
- Cost at your volume. Check each vendor's current pricing page and estimate monthly usage.
- Data and hosting. Ask where audio is processed and whether it is stored.
You may use both
Some teams use one vendor for recognition and another for the voice. That is fine if the combined delay is low enough for a natural conversation.