Mihup Eyes IPO Amid Talks with Leading Automaker

Kolkata, Mar 19 (PTI) Kolkata-based conversational intelligence firm Mihup on Wednesday said it is in advanced talks with one of India’s top passenger automobile makers to integrate its in-car virtual assistant, following its partnership with Tata Motors.

The company, which has raised Rs 100 crore in venture funding, including Rs 50 crore in October last year, is also preparing for an initial public offering (IPO) within the next two years, Mihup Co-founder & CEO Tapan Barman told PTI.

Mihup’s voice assistant, which replaced a global competitor’s solution in Tata Motors’ vehicles in 2021, is now deployed in over one million cars, and the company expects rapid growth with new OEMs, the official claimed.

The upcoming deal with another top passenger car maker is expected to further strengthen its foothold in the automotive sector.

“I cannot divulge the OEM now due to confidentiality, but it is one of the largest car makers in India,” Barman said.

The company aims to scale its proprietary AI-driven voice solutions, which cater to multilingual and vernacular language commands, making technology more accessible to Indian consumers and global clients.

“Our technology is designed to understand and respond to multiple Indian languages and dialects of each language. For instance, in Hindi, it supports all regional variations. This adaptability gives us a strong competitive advantage over global competition,” Barman said.

The firm has tailored a generic large language model (LLM) with domain-specific knowledge, an automatic speech recognition (ASR) engine, a text-to-speech system, and noise suppression technology, all developed in-house.

Beyond automobiles, Mihup is expanding into the BFSI and customer service sectors with AI-driven solutions for call centre analytics and agent assistance. Its proprietary platform analyses customer-agent interactions in real time, optimises renewal rates for insurance companies and automates post-call documentation to enhance efficiency, the company said.

While Barman did not disclose revenue or profitability, he said the company is growing rapidly and is also eyeing global markets after some consolidation in the domestic market.

Mihup plans to incorporate languages such as US and UK English, Portuguese, Arabic and German to compete with major international players in conversational AI.

An analyst at a brokerage firm noted that a product solution company is likely to attract a high valuation.

However, the biggest risk for technology firms lies in valuing their business models, as the disruption lifecycle remains unpredictable amid rapid advancements in artificial intelligence.