Per-minute rates compared
English-only voice agent (ElevenLabs / Bland.ai): ₹4-8 per minute including LLM + STT + TTS. Indian language voice agent (Sarvam Bulbul v3 + Saaras STT): ₹2-4 per minute — cheaper because Sarvam's pricing is INR-native. Local self-hosted Whisper + Llama: ₹0.5-1.5 per minute but engineering cost ₹3-8L upfront. Human Indian agent: ₹15-20 per minute fully-loaded (salary + supervisor + infra).
Total monthly cost for typical use cases
Clinic appointment reminder calls (300 calls/month, 2 min each): ₹1,800-3,600. Real estate lead qualification (500 calls/month, 4 min each): ₹6,000-12,000. Inbound restaurant orders (1,000 calls/month, 3 min each): ₹6,000-18,000. Outbound debt collection (2,000 calls/month, 5 min each): ₹20,000-60,000.
What we recommend
For sub-2,000-call/month volumes, use Sarvam directly — pay-as-you-go, no commitment. For 2,000-10,000 calls/month, negotiate volume discount with Sarvam or pair with ElevenLabs for English calls. Beyond 10,000/month, self-hosted Whisper on a Bangalore GPU server pays back in 4-6 months.