ElevenLabs and KITS sign memorandum of cooperation on Kannada speech AI

On October 19, 2026, ElevenLabs and the Karnataka Innovation and Technology Society (KITS) signed a memorandum of understanding to explore the use of Kannada speech AI for citizen services, skills training, and grievance handling in Karnataka, and to enable users who have lost their voice to communicate via synthesized speech and receive free lifetime licenses. Reports from representatives said that Indian speech AI startups opposed this: Dheemanth Reddy of Maya Research is concerned that sensitive conversations between citizens and the government will flow to foreign jurisdictions, and Raoul Nanavati of Navana.ai believes that government contracts are the most valuable endorsement for local companies. The same report also compared prices: the discounted price of the ElevenLabs v4 text-to-speech API is about 2.11 rupees per 1,000 characters, while Sarvam AI is 3 rupees per 1,000 characters. There are currently no subsequent developments of fact.

AI-generated from public reports

1. Oct 19· 1 reports

   ElevenLabs and KITS sign memorandum of cooperation on Kannada speech AI

   Source:Analytics India Magazine