Ex-Bain, now building Voice AI agents that help recruit and never ghost candidates
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Artificial Intelligence
India
27 Years
I’m Maitreya, a 27-year-old founder building Bolna, a platform to create intelligent Voice AI Agents that screen and manage candidates throughout the recruitment process.
In one line, Bolna helps recruiters scale their hiring workflows by using AI Agents that speak to candidates, assess them, and act as their Relationship Managers.
My journey began at IIT Delhi, followed by a stint at Bain & Company, and then the Founder's Office at Probo, a fast-scaling consumer tech startup. While these experiences were rich in learning, I always knew I wanted to build something of my own — something from 0 to 1. I’ve always been drawn to the idea of making tech feel more human, and voice is the most natural way we communicate. Bolna started with a simple idea: what if recruiters could screen hundreds of candidates in parallel — with all the depth and nuance of a real conversation — without burning out or losing quality?
Today, Bolna’s AI agents can call, interview, assess, and engage candidates at scale. From asking behavioral questions to explaining job roles and giving feedback, our agents act like dedicated team members — but are available 24/7 and scale infinitely. We’re already working with fast-growing companies across 10+ countries who use Bolna to cut down screening time from weeks to hours.
"Our AI agents don’t just screen candidates. They talk, listen, and build trust — like a real team member."
What inspired you to start your own business?
Right from school, I loved placing myself in leadership roles and being in the forefront of solving problems. At Bain and later at Probo, I saw firsthand how companies scale, what breaks, and where the real customer pain lies. I loved those roles — but deep down, I was waiting for the problem that felt personal enough to chase full-time.
The spark for Bolna came while speaking to recruiters and founders across fast-growing startups. One conversation stood out: a recruiter mentioned how she’d spoken to 60+ candidates in a day, barely ate lunch, and still felt behind. That stuck with me. Hiring is the bottleneck for most teams — not because of a lack of applicants, but because screening takes time, energy, and human effort. I realized: if we could teach AI to speak like a recruiter and make sense of what candidates say, we could unlock a whole new kind of recruiting.
How did you go from idea to product?
We started with a simple prototype — an agent that could answer basic questions for a barbershop. We hardcoded a few intents, hacked together Twilio, and manually reviewed transcripts. But even that crude version made one thing clear: people loved not missing a call.
From there, we built our infra layer — handling latency, voice quality, fallback logic, retries — while simultaneously building an intuitive dashboard for non-tech users. Then came our breakthrough: a Prompt Auto-Generator, which reads your past call data, FAQs, and CRM to build an intelligent agent in minutes. No manual prompt writing needed.
We hit our first 100 users organically, then launched a Recruitment AI Agent that screens candidates in real-time, handles objections, and gives structured feedback — replacing hours of recruiter effort.
How have you grown your business?
We started by reaching out personally to recruiters and founders in our network. LinkedIn DMs, cold emails, attending startup events, and connecting with my strong network from IIT Delhi and Bain — whatever it took to get feedback. Once we had a few early believers, we doubled down on showcasing real call recordings and case studies. People needed to hear the agents in action to believe it.
We’ve also leaned into content — sharing live demos, blog posts about hiring workflows, and short videos of our agents solving real problems. One viral video brought in 30+ inbound leads in 2 days. We now have 100+ active users across 10+ countries.
Short-term goal: Deepen our traction in tech hiring, especially for fast-growing startups and remote-first teams.
Long-term goal: Become the infrastructure for all voice-led candidate engagement — from sourcing to offer.
How are you funding your startup?
We received pre-seed funding from an accelerator, Upekkha. We were operating on a pure profit for the first 6 months before deciding to heavily invest on building a team and building scalable systems, that will lead to a profitable roadmap in the future.
What is your average monthly revenue?
We started making revenue only 3 months into our journey from companies who wanted custom-built Voice AI Agents. Today, our infra is live and making INR 2L (approx. $2300) monthly from pure self-serve inbounds, while we are working closely with 5+ clients on contracts worth an average of INR 1L ($1150) monthly each.
How are you doing today and what plans for the future?
We’ve made plenty of mistakes — from overbuilding features that no one used, to trying to sell to enterprises before we were ready. One early misstep was trying to cover multiple use cases (like customer support and sales) at once. Once we narrowed down to recruitment, everything clicked. Our messaging got sharper, onboarding got simpler, and customers saw value faster.
A few things that worked well:
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Publishing real call recordings instead of explainer videos. Nothing builds trust like hearing the product.
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Nailing one use case (screening) instead of being a generic voice tool.
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Building in public, sharing product updates, even our goof-ups. It built credibility.
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We’ve also benefited from broader trends:
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The shift to remote hiring post-COVID.
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The increasing burnout in HR teams.
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And the rise of conversational AI, which made our product seem less futuristic and more practical.
One habit that’s helped? Obsessively talking to users. Every week, we call (or AI-agent call!) at least 10 recruiters or hiring managers to learn what’s broken. That keeps us grounded and building the right stuff.
What’s the most unexpected thing you’ve learned about entrepreneurship?
The most unexpected thing? The hardest part isn’t building the product — it’s figuring out what not to build.
Coming from consulting and structured environments, I thought the challenge would be execution speed or product polish. But in startups, focus is everything. Early on, we tried to be a voice platform for everything — customer support, sales, internal tools. It diluted our narrative and confused our users. The day we decided to go all-in on recruitment, things started moving 10x faster. Suddenly, customers understood what we did, onboarding improved, and usage spiked.
Another big one: you don’t need 100 features — you need 3 that solve a burning problem. Users don’t care how cool the tech is unless it saves them time, money, or pain.
What is your proudest achievement so far?
We screened over 1,500 candidates for a single customer in under 4 days — entirely through AI voice agents, with no human intervention.
That one campaign showed us the power of what we were building. The company was struggling to scale hiring and didn’t have enough recruiters. We set up the agent in a day, synced with their ATS, and launched. The AI agent called, screened, scored, and sent reports to their hiring managers — all in real-time. Not only did it save them 80+ hours of manual effort, but their time-to-hire dropped by over 60%.
What role has your family or support system played in your entrepreneurial journey?
Huge. I’ve been incredibly lucky to have family and friends who not only believed in me but also gave me space to take risks. Quitting a stable job at Bain, then leaving a high-growth startup like Probo to start from scratch — those weren’t easy decisions. But my family never once questioned it. That emotional safety net made all the difference.
Also, my co-founders and early believers — they’ve been my backbone. There are days when things break, deals fall through, or imposter syndrome hits hard. And on those days, just having people who remind you why you started keeps you going.
Entrepreneurship can be lonely. But if you’re surrounded by people who believe in your unreasonable dreams — it’s the best feeling in the world.
What advice would you give to budding founders?
Fall in love with the problem. Understand what you are solving and who you are solving for. Move to building your product, deciding features etc. later.
Also, find a co-founder you truly trust and vibe with.
Are you currently hiring?
To apply, simply fill the form and have a screening call with our AI Agent -
Where can we find you?
Book Recommendations
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The Mom Test
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Thinking in Bets
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0 to 1 Journey
