Prabal Rastogi

Head of Engineering @bolna_dev | Building production Voice AI
Ex-Uber, LinkedIn
Systems, scale, and startup lessons.

[The Cockroach India 🇮🇳 @TheCockroachIND]

Democracy is turning into a joke, and the system is laughing at our silence 💔

[Tanisha Sharma @tanishasharmax]

in loving memory of prompt engineering (2024-2026)

gone too soon. survived by one drag-n-drop brief.

@bolna_dev’s agent studio launched on product hunt today. upload a doc, it builds the entire voice agent.

condolences and weird use cases accepted here: https://t.co/dVtz75U9wj

[bolna @bolna_dev]

Quick questions for Voice AI Builders!

1/How many times have you sat down to build a Voice AI agent and realised you need to gather a mountain of context even before you see the agent taking shape?

2/How many days do you take to go live with your Voice AI agent from the moment of ideation?

3/How many TTS, STT and LLM models do you scan through before getting to the voice that suits your agent the best?

What if we took all that hassle away for a market-ready voice AI agent with just one no-code platform?

Agent Studio on Bolna is your answer to all the questions above! Give it a shot on https://t.co/00t4J5A33Y

@xan_ps @maitreya_wagh @siddharth17 @tanishasharmax

[bolna @bolna_dev]

"i want to use my terminal less" said no developer ever

Bolna CLI is now in public beta for all terminal lovers with agent management, one-command calls, instant transcripts and a full screen dashboard 🚀

[Tanisha Sharma @tanishasharmax]

said a bunch of smart things at nexuscon’26 yesterday but the only thing anyone photographed was my tshirt that says “latency kills vibes”. fair honestly @bolna_dev

[Tanisha Sharma @tanishasharmax]

live from @bolna_dev hq - voice ai meetup is happening

[Prateek Sachan @xan_ps]

Achieving $1M in lifetime revenue is something @maitreya_wagh & I never imagined.

Grateful to the incredible @bolna_dev team & every user.

Still remember those days.. I'd crack open a beer everytime someone paid $10.

Safe to say, the beers eventually got a little too much 🍻

[Maitreya Wagh @maitreya_wagh]

"Indian businesses never spend money"
"Don't build for India"
"You'll get contracts but no money will hit the bank"

Today, we crossed $1M of lifetime revenue. Each and every dollar from Indian developers and enterprises 🚀

Next up $10M

@xan_ps @bolna_dev

[bolna @bolna_dev]

Everyone wants a perfect voice AI agent but no one wants to spend days on the part that makes it perfect!

The weeks between the concept of an agent, the prompt engineering, the tuning of it all is a tedious process that creates a barrier in shipping voice AI agents for India Inc.

At Bolna, we have been quietly working on that gap.
Something is brewing here!

Are you ready?

@xan_ps @maitreya_wagh @siddharth17 @web_havvv

[Prabal Rastogi @prabal1815]

@lukepierceops this is kinda scary tbh

[Sam Altman @sama]

there are a lot of benchmarks that suggest 5.6 sol is the best model in the world right now, but the most reliable way to tell is that elon is obsessed with me again

[Tanisha Sharma @tanishasharmax]

speaking at NexusCon’26 on july 18, representing @bolna_dev at the developers round table

if you’re building with AI, this room is worth being in. registrations close tomorrow (link below)

[Tanisha Sharma @tanishasharmax]

demoed @bolna_dev at the ai builders meetup by @NexusVP :) created an agent with bolna skills, let it take a gloriously buggy call, then fixed it all live with skills too. no dashboards were harmed. thank you @FrontierAmrut for hosting, got to meet so many cool folks

[Tanisha Sharma @tanishasharmax]

imagine a kirana store billing machine that talks back in kannada. hardware people, let’s make this real with a raspberry pi (or any other) and a @bolna_dev api key. that’s the whole stack. who wants to build a talking device?

[bolna @bolna_dev]

Bolna now supports Soniox v5 as a streaming transcriber.

Powered by its real-time stt-rt-v5 model, it transcribes whatever's spoken on a single connection, including mid-sentence switches between English and multiple regional languages with no per-language switching needed.

It brings native code-switching, semantic endpoint detection for natural turn-taking, per-token language identification, and support for both telephony and web calls.

Select Soniox v5 in the Audio tab on the playground and choose auto-detect or a specific language to get started.

@soniox_ai

[Prabal Rastogi @prabal1815]

Building Voice AI has made me rethink latency.

In many systems, latency is an engineering metric; in voice products, it becomes part of the user experience.

Users don't experience "500ms latency." They experience awkward silence.

That changes how you think about system design.

[bolna @bolna_dev]

We just wrapped Voc-A-Thon and the room left its mark.

Builders from spaces like @Walmart, @Oracle , @Microsoft, @gokwik, @Razorpay, SuperBryn, @Fujitsu_Global, and @Vobiz_Ai came together with a shared resolve to build for real life problems for the diverse Indian demography — the catch being adapting these solutions with voice AI interactions that felt human and intuitive, unlike most robotic voice AI agents available in the market.

The floor opened to incredible pitches through the day buzzed with the energy of innovation. Think of a gynaec's clinic which could give women freedom to schedule their appointments privately, a blue-collar worker with no resume but a keypad phone, caregiving for an aging parent living miles away from their kids or the information of a rare blood type going unfound while every minute counts.

All real problems, very human, important and mostly urgent ones.

The fact that every bit of these prototypes were built by people who've spent years crafting good products through the years, and chose to apply that lens to voice AI adaptations elevated the solutions further. The builds powered by @bolna_dev stack and @cartesia voice models undoubtedly added to the seamless deployment of the same.

Would you want to hear more of what was built in the room? Comment if you want a Voc-A-Thon Wall of Love featuring these.

[Shriraj Bhardwaj @SBHakunaMatata]

Bengaluru Road Rage Reality: This Could Have Ended Much Worse

I didn’t think I’d be writing something like this — but here’s the harsh reality of what happened to us on Bengaluru roads.

On 25th March 2026, around 8:20 PM, my colleague and I were driving back on Sarjapur Road when we encountered an auto (KA01AN4438) coming straight at us on the wrong side. A negligible touch between vehicles — no damage, nothing serious.

But that was enough.

What followed was not an argument — it was a chase.

The driver of KA01AN4438 started aggressively chasing us, trying to block our car multiple times in moving traffic, hitting the vehicle, and attempting to open the doors. We chose not to engage and instead tried to reach a safe place.

Then it escalated further.

Another auto (KA01AS8794) joined him. Together, they blocked our path near Sarjapur bridge. One of them picked up a concrete stone — and smashed our windshield while we were still inside.

Let that sink in.

We somehow managed to reach RGA Tech Park, thinking a gated office space would mean safety.

It didn’t.

Both drivers followed us inside. Before I could even step out of the car, I was physically assaulted — repeatedly hit in the face, leaving me injured.

Only after things calmed down did the main accused (KA01AN4438) flee. When the police arrived, the second driver (KA01AS8794) apologized in front of them.

This wasn’t “road rage.” This was unchecked violence.

And unfortunately, this isn’t an isolated story anymore. Too many people in Bengaluru have similar experiences but choose to stay silent.

Honestly, after this incident, I have made up my mind — I am going to leave Bengaluru and never come back.

If this is the state of our roads, then something is seriously broken.

Stay alert. Avoid confrontation. And most importantly — don’t assume you’re safe just because you’ve done nothing wrong.

Wrong Lane Driving: https://t.co/9pN85H4b80

Hitting Cars Blocking continuously: https://t.co/cl7VyYsb7n

Police Call during distress: https://t.co/pJCdTkjA9O

Smashing Windshield: https://t.co/mg5QRufibL

Full Drive Link: https://t.co/ntVSEzVXhP

I filed an online complaint about this on 26th March 2026.

Temporary Service Request Number 16443262300000184 has been registered.

[Abhi and Niyu @abhiandniyu]

Indians in America, unite!
Post about the ceasefire violations by Pakistan
Force your media to talk about it
The news in the west is extremely biased under the garb of de-escalation