Implementing Voice Commerce

In voice commerce, if they don’t say your name, you don’t exist. I said it! 83% of consumers say convenience matters more to them today than it did five years ago. And nothing captures that shift more clearly than voice commerce. What started as a novelty “Alexa, what’s the weather?” has quietly become a gateway to purchasing. The voice commerce market hit $40 billion in 2022, and it’s growing fast. Nearly half of smart speaker owners in the US have already used voice to shop. That changes the path to purchase in a big way. Because now, the first touchpoint isn’t a shelf, a screen, or even a search bar, it’s a sentence. When someone says “add detergent to my cart,” the brand that wins is the one that already owns that default. That’s why the big players are moving quickly. → Walmart's partnership with Apple now lets consumers shop via Siri. → Amazon’s expanding Alexa into cars with Echo Auto, as searches for it have jumped 131% in the last five years. → Google leads voice search with over 500 million monthly active users. But here’s the real opportunity and risk for consumer brands: Voice removes friction, but it also removes visibility. There’s no aisle, no comparison, no impulse shelf. If your brand isn’t top of mind (or top of algorithm), you simply don’t exist in that purchase moment. For FMCG leaders, that means brand loyalty, naming conventions, and distribution strategies all have to adapt to a world where “what people say” literally determines market share. The question now isn’t whether consumers will use voice to shop. They already are. The question is: when they do, will your brand be the one they ask for by name? What do you think, are brands adapting fast enough to this next interface shift? #voicecommerce #trends #fmcg

Imagine never manually ordering food again. Neil Agarwal, co-founder of Refix Analytics, connected Swiggy to an AI assistant called Clawdbot and automated his daily food and grocery routine. Now: • Chai arrives at 5 PM automatically • Groceries get ordered based on planned meals • Dinner suggestions adapt to his mood The setup? One minute. After that, it runs on autopilot. Before placing an order, the AI: • Generates a full cost breakdown • Shows delivery charges & taxes • Warns if cancellation isn’t allowed • Asks for explicit confirmation Then places the order. Clawdbot isn’t a typical chatbot. It remembers routines, preferences, past interactions and works inside WhatsApp, Telegram, iMessage, and Discord. But quietly removing small, repetitive headaches from everyday life. Would you trust AI to auto-order your food?

Your B2B customers aren't at a desk. They're in trucks, on job sites, between meetings. They shouldn't fill out order forms. They should call. And they do call your sales rep. Voice still dominates B2B ordering. The problem? Your sales rep takes the order. Manually enters it. Takes 10 minutes. Costs you $15 in labor. Meanwhile, simple questions like "Where's my order?" "Can you change my shipping address?" burns rep time, while they should be focusing on creating complex quotas, advising top accounts, and closing new deals. Quick build-up tutorial based on recent client need: → Voice agent built at ElevenLabs handles intake → Draft order created in Medusa → Sales rep reviews, approves, and sends a quote  → AI agent handles support questions like a change of address Zero rep time until the quote goes out. If your reps are still taking orders by hand, you're paying $15 for a task that costs <$0.1

Voice-first ordering just became real. Starbucks and Deepgram built a drive-thru prototype that handles 5+ modifications in pure chaos. Here's why this changes everything for quick-service restaurants: Drive-thru ordering is one of the most technically challenging environments for voice AI. You've got diesel engines running 6 feet from the microphone. Wind gusts hitting the speaker. Passengers shouting modifications from the back seat. These are the conditions that cause traditional voice systems to fail or require multiple repeats. The Starbucks prototype handles what breaks most voice AI: real-time complexity. The system processes every modification correctly. Then when the customer says "Actually, make that hot instead of iced" - it adjusts without restarting the conversation. This on-the-fly modification capability is what makes it revolutionary. Current drive-thru ordering breaks under pressure. During peak hours, staff juggle taking orders, handling payment, and coordinating with kitchen. This leads to order errors requiring remakes, frustrated customers leaving the line, and revenue loss when wait times exceed 5 minutes. Voice AI systems eliminate these bottlenecks through consistent throughput. The system processes orders at the same speed. It doesn't slow down, doesn't make more errors under pressure, and doesn't need breaks when volume spikes. But throughput is only part of the breakthrough. The system integrates with customer history and preferences. It remembers your usual order, suggests modifications based on past purchases, and handles loyalty programs without feeling transactional. Consumers now expect this everywhere. They want their preferences remembered, suggestions based on history, and zero friction at checkout - expectations that human-only drive-thrus struggle to meet consistently. The Starbucks prototype isn't an isolated experiment. Every quick-service restaurant faces identical operational challenges: noise interference, order complexity, peak demand pressure, and staff limitations during rush periods. The economics favor rapid adoption. Voice AI systems don't require breaks or call-outs. They maintain the same accuracy whether processing the first order of the day or the 500th. One system handles multiple concurrent orders across locations. The prototype proved this works in production conditions. But moving from prototype to scaled deployment requires infrastructure most companies lack: noise robustness that handles real chaos, real-time processing without latency, and integration that works across POS systems. This is what we built Voice.ai to solve. Our platform provides the noise robustness, cross-system integration, and scalable throughput that turns prototypes into production-ready voice ordering systems. If you're building in food service, retail, or high-throughput ordering environments, we should talk. If you're investing in companies tackling these problems, we should talk.

Swiggy just made typing optional. Speaking is the new scrolling. And India's next billion users are the reason why. On March 25, 2026, Swiggy announced a strategic partnership with Sarvam AI, an Indian sovereign AI company, to launch full voice-led commerce across its platform. Users can now order food, shop for groceries on Instamart, and book restaurant tables on Swiggy Dineout using simple voice commands across 11 Indian languages, including Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Bengali, and Marathi. Yahoo! Here is what makes this genuinely different: The entire journey, from product discovery to checkout and payment, is handled through conversation. No buttons. No menus. No typing. RT International Users can also place orders over a regular phone call, with no smartphone app or internet connection required, opening access to millions in low-connectivity and underserved regions. RT International Swiggy is also the first commerce platform to go live on Indus, Sarvam's AI-native chat application, with Razorpay powering the payment leg of the transaction. Middle East Eye Swiggy CTO Madhusudhan Rao said it best: "True accessibility means meeting users where they are, in the languages they speak." The business case here is enormous. India has 22 officially recognised languages. Over 900 million internet users, as per TRAI data. Yet most digital commerce still defaults to English. Swiggy's move aims to onboard millions of new users by shifting from screen-based interactions to voice-first experiences, redefining how consumers interact with digital services in India. UNITED24 Media This is not a feature update. This is a distribution strategy. Whoever wins the voice layer wins the next wave of Indian commerce. Are you building for the user who types, or the one who talks? Follow me for more breakdowns on India's tech and business ecosystem. #Swiggy #SarvamAI #VoiceCommerce #AIIndia #IndianStartups #Instamart #Dineout #ConversationalAI #DigitalIndia #LinkedInIndia #TechIndia #FutureOfCommerce

We built e-commerce in India, but not for how India actually transacts. We optimised for screens, keyboards, and Roman script for ourselves and then wondered why the next 300 million users didn’t convert. The answer was always clear: commerce in Bharat is conversational. From bazaars to mandis to gali ki dukaan, transactions happen through voice. We built for text and called it progress, then called it inclusion. We’ve now shipped a voice-first, no-touch commerce experience on Digihaat-a fully conversational flow from discovery to checkout. Native language. Hands-free. Zero taps. A buyer says, “ghar jaisa khana chahiye, thoda light.” The system understands, surfaces options, adds to cart, and completes payment on a simple “haan.” 65% of Indian internet users prefer voice. That’s not an accessibility stat. it’s a market signal. This isn’t just reducing friction. It’s restoring familiarity. The kirana waala understood nuance, memory, and intent through conversation, not filters. Conversational commerce brings that back by design. sahaAI is here - We’re starting with food. Fashion, home, and handicrafts on Digihaat are next. A buyer can say, “beti ki shaadi ke liye kuch chahiye,” and be guided end-to-end - entirely by voice. For Bharat’s next 300 million users, this isn’t an upgrade. It’s the first time e-commerce has been designed for them on similar lines what WhatsApp did with chat. Layer 1: Search - understands what you type Layer 2: Voice - understands and acts Layer 3: Agentic support - resolves what follows Bharat’s users weren’t disengaged. They were waiting for something they could actually use. Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Government of India, Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade Open Network For Digital Commerce (ONDC) Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology Startup India Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi GOOGLE INDIA Google for Business India DigiHaat Dr. RS Sharma Pramod Varma Dr. Arvind Gupta T Koshy Adil Zainulbhai Anjali Bansal Suresh Sethi Nitin Mishra Jaxay Shah Abhishek Singh Sanjiv Singh Moin Afaque , Darshan Patel Suraj Saharan Vibhor Jain Pranjal Sharma Manoj Thakur Ashish Wattal Siddharth Prakash Nitin G Gupta MONOJIT DATTA Neema (Lidya) O. Prabhakar Jha Abhinav Tiwari Sumit Jain Saurav Tiwari Shubho Sengupta

𝗦𝗾𝘂𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗷𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝗴𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝗿𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗮𝘂𝗿𝗮𝗻𝘁𝘀 𝗮 𝟮𝟰/𝟳 𝗽𝗵𝗼𝗻𝗲 𝗵𝗼𝘀𝘁 — 𝗽𝗼𝘄𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗱 𝗯𝘆 𝗔𝗜 🍔📞 Square (Block) rolled out 𝗔𝗜-𝗽𝗼𝘄𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗱 𝘃𝗼𝗶𝗰𝗲 𝗼𝗿𝗱𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴 so restaurants don’t miss another call at peak rush. The bot answers the phone, understands menu questions (“𝘞𝘩𝘢𝘵’𝘴 𝘨𝘭𝘶𝘵𝘦𝘯-𝘧𝘳𝘦𝘦?” “𝘌𝘹𝘵𝘳𝘢 𝘴𝘱𝘪𝘤𝘺, 𝘯𝘰 𝘥𝘢𝘪𝘳𝘺”), takes the order, and injects it straight into POS/kitchen – no staff juggling, no sticky notes. Early rollouts land alongside upgrades to Square AI (their conversational assistant) and an 𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗴𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝗕𝗶𝘁𝗰𝗼𝗶𝗻 𝘀𝗼𝗹𝘂𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝘀𝗲𝗹𝗹𝗲𝗿𝘀.  — 𝗪𝗵𝘆 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗺𝗮𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗿𝘀 • 𝗡𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿 𝗺𝗶𝘀𝘀 𝗿𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗻𝘂𝗲: Every call gets answered, even during dinner rush or short staffing.  • 𝗛𝗶𝗴𝗵𝗲𝗿 𝗼𝗿𝗱𝗲𝗿 𝗾𝘂𝗮𝗹𝗶𝘁𝘆: The system can confirm modifiers, allergens, pricing, and promos before firing to the line.  • 𝗖𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗻𝗲𝗿 𝗼𝗽𝘀: Orders land in the Square POS and kitchen display with audit trails; no rekeying = fewer errors.  • 𝗕𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗵𝗺𝗮𝗿𝗸𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗿𝗲𝗻𝗱: Voice AI is spreading across QSR – the winners pair accuracy with tight POS integration. Square’s move brings that to independents and multi-unit locals. 𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗲𝗹𝘀𝗲 𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗽𝗽𝗲𝗱 – Square AI gains deeper “𝗻𝗲𝗶𝗴𝗵𝗯𝗼𝗿𝗵𝗼𝗼𝗱 𝗶𝗻𝘀𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁𝘀” (weather, events, reviews) to help with staffing and menus. – Square Bitcoin lets U.S. sellers 𝗮𝗰𝗰𝗲𝗽𝘁 𝗕𝗧𝗖 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗻 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘁 𝗰𝗮𝗿𝗱 𝘀𝗮𝗹𝗲𝘀 𝘁𝗼 𝗯𝗶𝘁𝗰𝗼𝗶𝗻 inside Square, with fee-free promos at launch. 𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗜’𝗹𝗹 𝘄𝗮𝘁𝗰𝗵: accuracy in noisy environments, smart upsells (add sides/drinks without being pushy), and real-world impact on 𝗽𝗵𝗼𝗻𝗲-𝗮𝗻𝘀𝘄𝗲𝗿 𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲, 𝗯𝗮𝘀𝗸𝗲𝘁 𝘀𝗶𝘇𝗲, 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗿𝗲𝗺𝗮𝗸𝗲 𝗰𝗼𝘀𝘁𝘀. If those move, voice AI becomes a no-brainer line item rather than a lab experiment. — Would you let an AI take your restaurant’s phone orders during peak hours? Why or why not? P.S. I’m continuing this theme on my Substack – deep dive here: https://lnkd.in/eG7TbJbJ #Square #Block #Restaurants #VoiceAI #POS #HospitalityTech #OrderAhead #Fintech #Bitcoin #QSR #CustomerExperience #Automation

A Favourite Topic of Mine to begin 2025: Conversational Commerce - Beyond a Click The global spending on conversational commerce is projected to soar from $41 billion in 2021 to $290 billion by 2025, indicating a significant shift towards this model in e-commerce. Lets deep dive into whats powering this change, and the ML advancements: ✅ Natural Language Processing Enhancements to help AI understand human-like language more effectively. This enables: 👉 Contextual Understanding: Improved algorithms allow chatbots to maintain context over multiple interactions, enabling them to provide coherent responses based on previous conversations 👉 Emotion Recognition: Integrating emotional intelligence such as tone, pace, and sentiment in customer communications into chatbots allows them to recognize and respond to human emotions, enhancing user satisfaction and engagement ✅ Multi-Modal Machine Learning involving various types of data—such as text, audio, and images. This helps: 👉Enhanced Contextual Awareness: For example, pairing visual data (like product images) with text descriptions can improve the accuracy of responses and recommendations 👉Improve User Experience: Multi-modal systems can create richer interactions by integrating visual elements with conversational interfaces, making the shopping experience more engaging and informative ✅ Adaptive Learning Algorithms allowing continuous improvement based on new data from user interactions. This helps: 👉Personalized Recommendations: As chatbots learn from each interaction, they can refine their suggestions tailored to the individual 👉Predictive Customer Service: By analyzing historical data, these algorithms can anticipate customer needs and proactively address issues, enhancing overall service quality 👉Streamlining processes using unsupervised machine learning: To autonomously draw conclusions, rapidly examining data structures to identify potential patterns, enabling automated decision making and refining the same ✅ Advanced Speech Recognition Technologies for better voice-based interactions in conversational commerce. This helps: 👉Higher Accuracy Rates: Enhanced algorithms reduce errors in transcribing spoken language into text, making voice interactions more reliable 👉Real-Time Feedback Mechanisms: Advanced ASR systems can provide immediate feedback during conversations, allowing customer service agents to adjust their responses based on the customer's tone or emotional state ✅ Generative Pre-trained Transformers are revolutionizing how conversational AI systems generate text. This helps: 👉Dynamic Response Generation: Instead of relying on scripted replies, now contextually relevant responses are produced that feel more natural and engaging to users 👉Scalability of Interactions: Customer support generative models capable of handling numerous simultaneous conversations can be deployed How we interact and transact is about to change forever, in a fascinating way 😊 #AI #Commerce

We just built something that didn't exist six months ago. An AI agent that calls your customer, recovers the abandoned cart, handles every objection, and collects the payment. On the same call. No human. No handoff. No delay. This is what we've been working on with Razorpay and I want to explain why this is a bigger deal than it sounds. Right now, every e-commerce brand in India has the same broken workflow. Customer abandons cart. Brand fires an email. Customer ignores it. Brand fires an SMS. Customer ignores it. Brand fires a retargeting ad and pays for the same customer twice. Meanwhile the actual reason they left, a question about delivery, a doubt about returns, a moment of hesitation that a single conversation could have resolved, never gets addressed. Because there was nobody there to have the conversation. That's the gap we've been obsessing over. Not the marketing funnel. Not the checkout page. The moment after intent is established and before the payment goes through. That window 20 minutes, maybe 30, where a customer is still warm, still interested, still recoverable. We built a voice AI agent that lives in that window. It calls within minutes. It knows exactly what was in the cart. It speaks the customer's language. It answers the question that caused the drop. And when the customer says yes, it generates a Razorpay payment link, sends it in real time, and confirms the transaction before the call ends. From abandoned cart to paid order. One conversation. Zero humans required. And it doesn't stop there. COD order placed? Agent calls immediately, confirms address, converts to prepaid with an incentive. Payment overdue? Agent follows up, sends the link, collects on the call. Post-purchase upsell? Agent calls after delivery, recommends the next product, closes the reorder. The entire commerce journey, conversation, decision, payment, confirmation handled by one agent, end to end. What this actually means for a D2C brand running at scale: Every abandoned cart gets a real conversation within 20 minutes. Every COD order gets confirmed before it ships. Every collection followup happens automatically. Every upsell opportunity gets acted on. Not when a human is available. Every time. Immediately. At any volume. We've spent months on this because we believed one thing, the future of commerce isn't a better checkout page. It's an agent that closes the sale the way your best salesperson would, by actually talking to the customer. superU AI + Razorpay is that agent. If you're running a D2C brand and recovery, conversion, or collections, this was built for you.

Hot take: The biggest untapped sales channel in food service isn't TikTok, Instagram or email. It's the device your customers are already using to call you. But 99% of businesses treat it like a 1990s liability, not a 2025 revenue engine. The phone rings, a busy employee answers, and you get a simple transaction. That's not a strategy; it's a missed opportunity. The most forward-thinking brands are moving beyond "phone orders" and implementing a full Conversational Commerce Playbook. They're turning voice into their most profitable and data-rich channel. Here's the 4-stage playbook they're using to win: 🎯 Stage 1: CAPTURE — The Flawless Front Door. Your goal is 100% capture. No busy signals, no dropped calls, no "Can you hold, please?" An AI-powered voice system acts as your perfect digital host, ensuring every single potential customer is greeted professionally and engaged immediately, 24/7. This isn't just service; it's Day 1 revenue recovery. 🧠 Stage 2: GUIDE — The Intelligent Concierge. This is where the magic happens. Instead of a passive order-taker, the AI acts as a guide. Based on the conversation, it makes intelligent suggestions, offers smart pairings ("Our spicy fries go great with that burger"), and clarifies modifications, dramatically increasing order accuracy and customer confidence. 📈 Stage 3: MAXIMIZE — The Data-Driven Upsell. This is pure profit. The AI accesses past order history or current promotions to make hyper-relevant upsells. "I see you love our milkshakes, have you tried our new seasonal flavor?" This is a personalized, non-intrusive suggestion that can boost Average Order Value (AOV) by 15-20% consistently. It's a trained salesperson on every single call. 🔄 Stage 4: RETAIN — The Effortless Re-Order. The ultimate goal: loyalty. The system recognizes a repeat customer's number. "Welcome back, Sarah! Are you getting your usual Friday team lunch order today?" By making re-ordering a one-sentence confirmation, you create a frictionless experience that builds powerful, long-term customer habits and sky-high Customer Lifetime Value (CLV). This isn't science fiction. This is the new operational standard for scalable, high-performing food service brands. The engine behind this playbook is an AI that can remember, integrate, and personalize. At VOICEplug AI, we're building this conversational engine to help brands move from simple transactions to intelligent, revenue-driving relationships. 🎤 Here’s the big question for all the industry leaders, investors, and innovators here: Which of these 4 stages presents the single biggest opportunity—or the most overlooked challenge—for the food service industry right now? Drop your thoughts below. Let’s get a real discussion going. #ConversationalCommerce #FoodService #FoodTech #AI #RestaurantIndustry #VoiceAI #GrowthStrategy #Innovation #FutureofFood #RestaurantTech #CustomerExperience #CX #VentureCapital #VoicePlugAI