Chariot AI: Pioneering Empathetic Voice Reasoning for India’s Future

Note: Coverage from the DD India Special Segment on AI Impact Summit 2026.

Have you ever felt frustrated by customer support that rattles off information in a flat, robotic tone with zero empathy? While the world has been captivated by text-based systems like ChatGPT, a new frontier is emerging from New Delhi that seeks to bridge the gap between human emotion and machine intelligence.

Meet Chariot, an AI frontier lab based in the Delhi NCR region, which is pioneering a "voice-first" approach to artificial intelligence. In an exclusive interview with DD India, co-founder Parth Sarthi shared how their models are moving beyond simple text-to-speech to actual speech reasoning.

The Mission: Voice-First AI with Reasoning

Unlike models developed in the West that primarily focus on text, Chariot recognizes that India is a voice-first country. Their models aren't just designed to speak; they are designed to think before they speak.

"The core technology behind our model... is that it can actually reason," Parth explained. "It can actually think about what is being said rather than just saying what the user intended."

This shift from retrieval to reasoning allows the AI to process context and emotional nuances, a critical step for a builder mindset aimed at creating world-class technology from India.

A Powerhouse Team from Google and Meta

The foundation of Chariot is built on world-class expertise. The lab was co-founded by Parth Sarthi and Suvrat Bhooshan, both of whom bring deep technical pedigree back to India:

• Parth Sarthi: Previously a contributor at Google DeepMind, where he worked on multimodal reasoning for Gemini Deep Think.
• Suvrat Bhooshan: A Stanford alum who spent years at Meta's (Facebook) AI Research team before returning to India to start GAN Studio (known for AI avatars for celebrities).

Supported by a team of research engineers from IITs and a massive network of data annotators across the country, Chariot represents the growing trend of high-tier talent returning to India to solve local problems at scale. This mirrors the innovation we've seen in other sectors, such as the launch of Kiro IDE.

Empathetic Communication in Action

The true disruption lies in tonal modulation and prosody. Chariot’s model understands whether it is acting as a teacher, a tour guide, or an emergency responder.

Real-World Use Cases:

1. AI Teachers: Captivating a class by modulating speed and tone to keep students engaged, rather than delivering a monotone lecture.
2. Emergency Advisories: Delivering instructions with the necessary seriousness and urgency to prompt action during a crisis.
3. Tourism & Storytelling: Providing tour guides with the "flare" and local flavor that makes travel engaging.

"A good teacher can really captivate the class... they can modulate their tone depending on the context," said Parth. This level of sensitivity is what sets Chariot apart from existing robotic solutions.

Leading the Global South

Chariot is a key participant in the IndiaAI Mission and the AI Impact Summit 2026. By leveraging the government's support—including increased compute availability and tax holidays for data centers—the team is aiming to prove that frontier research can be pioneered out of India.

"We are not playing catch-up with any of the models in the West," Parth emphasized. "We are actually aiming to pioneer this technology out of India."

The model is set to launch with the top 10 Indian languages and English, with plans to support all 22 official languages and the top 10 global languages. This is part of a broader movement where labs like Soket AI are also pushing the boundaries of Indic-language foundational models.

Conclusion: India as an AI Pioneer

With a vision to move beyond text-to-speech into full voice-first conversational agents, Chariot is positioning itself as a leader in the next age of AI. By focusing on reasoning and empathy, they are not only solving for India’s diverse linguistic landscape but also setting a global standard for how humans interact with machines.

As India takes the lead in the Global South’s AI discourse, startups like Chariot are proving that the future of technology isn't just about faster processing—it's about deeper understanding.