Author
Priya Sharma
Priya co-founded AIVA in 2024. Runs the team and the recruiting. Believes in building in Rajkot. Argues with Karan about typography.
Posts by Priya Sharma
AI receptionist for cloud kitchens and delivery brands
No dining room, no host stand — easy to assume a delivery-only kitchen needs no AI receptionist. It still gets the calls that decide whether they order again.
AI voice agent vs. chatbot-only: when text isn't enough
A chat widget makes a business feel covered. Then the phone rings anyway — because typing was never the plan for a customer in a hurry. Here's which to pick.
Build vs. buy: why small businesses shouldn't build voice AI
Wiring speech-to-text to a language model to text-to-speech looks like a weekend project. The build vs buy voice AI decision gets harder right after that.
Cheapest AI phone answering service in India: what it costs
The cheapest number on a pricing page and the cheapest number on your actual invoice are often two different things. Here's where the gap usually hides.
Every feature in our changelog we almost didn't ship.
Escalation rules, twelve languages at once, even the changelog page itself — features that almost didn't happen. A running account of the close calls.
Hiring engineers in Rajkot, 18 months later: what we learned
We predicted lower burn and deeper loyalty from hiring in Rajkot over Bengaluru. Eighteen months later, here's what held up and what we got wrong.
Serving customers in 14 countries from a Rajkot office
One office, eight people, customers in fourteen countries. The math only works because of what we chose not to build. Here's everything we skipped.
Why usage-based pricing is fairer for seasonal businesses.
A flat monthly fee is a bet that your business looks the same every month. For most seasonal businesses, that bet is wrong twice a year. Here's a better model.
Verloop alternative: what changes without a CX team
Verloop is sized for companies with a CX stack and a procurement team. If you're the owner, the ops lead, and the phone-answerer, the evaluation differs.
Why we cap ourselves at an 8-person engineering team
We're not staying small because we lack ambition. We're staying small because of what we've watched extra headcount cost everywhere else we've seen it added.
Why we hired for customer success before we hired for sales.
We went eighteen months without a dedicated head of sales. We didn't go nearly that long without someone whose only job was keeping customers happy.
Why we built a startup in Rajkot instead of Bengaluru
Lower burn, 3.2-year average tenure, and a talent pool nobody was tapping. The honest case for building in Tier-2 India — including what it genuinely costs.