Our Own Devices with Nandagopal Rajan Can your phone have a personal AI assistant?
13 snips
Feb 16, 2026 Keshav Reddy, founder of Equal AI and serial entrepreneur building consumer AI products. He talks about an app that answers and triages phone calls for users. He discusses why calls remain central in India, handling many languages and accents, and plans for outbound assistant actions and privacy-first design.
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Call-Handling AI Launched And Traction
- Equal AI is a phone call assistant app that answers calls you don’t want to pick up and determines who and why they are calling.
- The app launched publicly in October and reached 50,000 monthly active users after a viral launch video.
Phone Calls Still Carry Strong Intent
- Phone calls in India still carry intent and many are service or transaction related rather than social.
- Equal AI targets these intent-driven calls to filter relevance and only connect important ones to users.
Set Preferences To Reduce Interruptions
- Tell the assistant what types of calls you want to accept so it can filter and prompt accordingly.
- Use preferences (e.g., interested in real estate, not finance) to have the assistant connect only relevant callers.