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Smallest AI, a San Francisco-based foundational AI research lab, has appointed Siddharth Sharma as President of Banking, Financial Services, and Insurance, India. In his role, Sharma will own revenue and partnerships for the company's growing BFSI business, working directly with co-founder and CEO Sudarshan Kamath.
The appointment follows the company's $21 million funding round announced in July 2026 and the growing demand from Indian banks, NBFCs, and insurers for voice AI solutions that can handle collections and customer-service calls in the languages their customers actually speak. Smallest AI builds its own speech recognition and synthesis models, covers over 14+ Indian languages alongside English, and supports self-hosted deployment inside a customer's own infrastructure a requirement for most regulated institutions. "BFSI is now one of our strongest verticals in India, and requires localized leadership to continue providing the level of support our customers expect," said Sudarshan Kamath, co-founder and CEO, Smallest AI. Banks expect a partner who understands how they evaluate, govern and scale technology. Siddharth has built digital banking businesses inside India's largest banks, and has a history of building mutually-beneficial financial partnerships. Were looking forward to his leadership in this sector as Smallest AI grows. Sharma has spent over 20 years in banking and financial services, across ICICI, YES Bank, Kotak Mahindra Bank and CRED. During his time at CRED, he led partnerships with banks and financial institutions. At Kotak Mahindra Bank, he was Vice President and Head of Go-to-Market for Digital Initiatives. Before that, Sharma was Senior Vice President at YES Bank, where he worked across Unified Payments Interface (UPI), wallets, Bharat Bill Payment System (BBPS), and the Aadhaar Enabled Payment System (AePS). He was most recently Vice President, Credit & Strategy, at CashFlo. "Indian banks need voice AI that works in the customer's language, on a real phone line, at the scale of a national loan book; all without sensitive data leaving their control," said Siddharth Sharma, President BFSI, India, Smallest AI. Collections and service calls are the areas where that need is sharpest. Very few companies build the underlying speech models and can run them inside a bank's own infrastructure. I believe that Smallest AI has the combination to solve this issue and am excited to work alongside Sudarshan and his team to support these customers. Based in Mumbai, Sharma will lead Smallest AI's go-to-market with banks, NBFCs, insurers, and financial-services partners. Hell be responsible for building the Smallest AI partner network in the sector, and shaping how its voice agents are deployed across collections, servicing and onboarding. About Smallest AI Smallest AI is a foundational AI research lab building the next generation of real-time voice AI infrastructure for enterprises. The company develops speech recognition, speech generation, and speech-to-speech systems designed to enable natural, scalable AI conversations across customer service, healthcare, financial services, and other high-volume communication environments. Headquartered in San Francisco, Smallest AI serves enterprises globally through its Voice 4.0 platform and proprietary AI models, including Lightning TTS and Pulse STT. The company is backed by Seligman Ventures, Sierra Ventures, 3one4 Capital, Better Capital, Upsparks Capital, Schema Ventures, Tiny VC, DeVC, Mission Street Capital, and other angel investors. (ANI)
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