Hunar.AI has raised Rs 40 crore in a Series A funding round led by Blume Ventures. The round also saw participation from Hyderabad Angels Fund, Together Fund, Seedstars, AVNM Ventures, PhysicsWallah co-founders Prateek Maheshwari and Alakh Pandey, and MediaMint co-founder Aditya Vuchi.
Hunar.AI will use the funds for building AI infrastructure, product development, and go-to-market expansion. The company is focused on developing specialised AI technology for frontline-intensive industries, where high-volume hiring, geographically distributed teams, and language diversity create operational challenges that conventional HR systems struggle to address.
“Frontline workforce management is one of the largest yet most underserved opportunities in enterprise AI. Solving it requires more than applying general-purpose models to existing processes. It demands a deep understanding of industry workflows, multilingual capabilities and technology that can reliably execute tasks at scale,” said Krishna Khandelwal, Co-founder and CEO, Hunar.AI.
Founded in 2022 by Krishna Khandelwal and Shantanu Bhattacharyya, Hunar’s platform comprises Hunar Voice and Hunar Connect, which use conversational AI agents to manage workforce workflows through voice, WhatsApp and chat. Workflows include candidate sourcing and screening, interview scheduling, onboarding, training, employee engagement and worker retention. By automating high-volume interactions, the platform helps enterprises manage frontline workforce processes while maintaining communication with candidates and employees across locations.
Arpit Agrawal, Partner at Blume Ventures said, “As the world looks to India for lessons in managing these new-age businesses at scale, Hunar is building the AI layer that makes them possible. By focusing on outcomes rather than infrastructure, Hunar has the potential to build a category in India that can scale globally.”
According to a statement, Hunar’s AI agents handled over 15 million conversations in September 2026, with conversation volumes doubling every quarter. Its clients include Swiggy, Delhivery, Instamart, Pronto, Blue Dart, Flipkart, Aditya Birla Capital and Tata Croma.
NITI Aayog projects that India’s gig workforce will grow from around 1 crore workers in 2024–25 to 2.35 crore by 2029–30. As enterprises expand across cities and regions, hiring, onboarding and retaining workers efficiently has become an important operational priority, with many processes still dependent on manual calls, repeated follow-ups and coordination.