The global leader in AI-driven voice technology, ElevenLabs, has signaled a major acceleration of its international growth strategy with the appointment of Karthik Rajaram as its new General Manager and Country Head for India. Rajaram’s mandate is directly focused on scaling the company’s presence in one of the world's fastest-growing digital economies, specifically tasking him with spearheading the go-to-market strategy and revenue expansion across India's critical AI, media, and enterprise sectors. His arrival underscores the significant strategic importance ElevenLabs places on the Indian market, positioning it as a key hub for the future of AI voice and audio innovation.[1][2][3][4]

The selection of Rajaram for this pivotal role is a clear indication of ElevenLabs' commitment to embedding deep, experienced leadership in the region. Karthik Rajaram brings to the company a formidable track record, boasting more than two decades of experience building and scaling high-growth technology businesses across the subcontinent.[1][2][3] Most recently, he served as General Manager and Vice President for India and South Asia at Elastic, where he was instrumental in leading rapid market expansion and establishing the country as a vital growth market globally for the search analytics firm.[1][5][3] His extensive background also includes significant senior leadership positions at major technology entities such as Freshworks, Akamai Technologies, and Microsoft. In these roles, Rajaram focused heavily on driving cloud, security, and enterprise adoption across some of India's largest organizations, demonstrating a proven ability to navigate the complex landscape of B2B and enterprise technology sales and partnership building in India.[1][2][3] This wealth of experience in forging strategic alliances and orchestrating comprehensive technology adoption strategies is directly aligned with ElevenLabs’ goal of establishing a robust partner ecosystem for its sophisticated AI voice solutions.

ElevenLabs executives have openly characterized India as being at the "epicenter of the global AI and digital content revolution," a sentiment that frames the high-stakes nature of Rajaram’s new position.[1][3] Carles Reina, VP International at ElevenLabs, noted that India is one of the most important markets for the future of AI voice and audio, citing the nation's "massive developer ecosystem, fast-growing digital economy, and leadership in content, media, and technology services" as representing a huge opportunity.[1][2] Indeed, the Indian market has already emerged as the largest user base for the global AI voice company, with the Hindi language now ranking among the top three languages utilized on the platform worldwide.[6] This organic adoption highlights a significant, demonstrated market appetite for human-like, scalable, and trustworthy voice experiences. The use cases for AI voice in India are described as "exploding," covering a diverse spectrum from media and entertainment to customer engagement, gaming, and education.[1][3] This strategic move is therefore not just about entering a market, but about capitalizing on a pre-existing, accelerating demand curve that spans both consumer and enterprise sectors.

The go-to-market strategy under Rajaram’s leadership is expected to be multifaceted, designed to address India’s linguistic diversity and its tiered economic structure. ElevenLabs currently employs a hybrid, two-pronged SaaS model globally, which is already at play in the Indian market.[7] The first is a self-serve freemium model that scales up to subscription tiers, appealing to individual content creators, developers, and smaller businesses.[7] The second approach targets large enterprises with requirements for bespoke solutions, high-volume processing, and dedicated support.[7] The company is already demonstrating success in this model, working with prominent Indian platforms in various sectors, including audio storytelling (Pocket FM, Kuku FM), and conversational AI and customer engagement workflows (Meesho, Apna, 99acres, and NoBroker).[7] A core element of the India-specific strategy is deep localization. ElevenLabs has committed to being both a global and local player, actively expanding its language coverage to better serve the country's multilingual landscape.[8] This includes supporting 32 languages in text-to-speech and 99 languages in speech-to-text, with their AI speech-to-text model, Scribe, already addressing 11 Indian languages, including those with smaller data corpora, such as Assamese.[8][6] The firm is also making local investments in research, engaging with regional voice actors to build a diverse and regionally accurate voice library that captures local dialects, accents, and styles, ensuring the AI-generated voices feel truly native.[8]

Rajaram’s appointment represents a significant escalation in ElevenLabs’ commitment, moving beyond simply offering a product to establishing a comprehensive, enduring presence in India, complete with local teams and intensified ecosystem partnerships.[1][3] The AI voice and audio industry views this as a landmark appointment, solidifying the trend of global AI giants making substantial, long-term investments in the Indian technology ecosystem. His leadership is poised to bridge the gap between cutting-edge foundational AI models and the complex, multilingual, and diverse content needs of the Indian consumer and enterprise landscape. By focusing on both revenue growth and a strong partner ecosystem, Rajaram will be steering ElevenLabs to not only acquire a market share but to help define the very category of hyper-realistic, ethical AI-driven content generation across the world's most populous nation. This move reinforces the global narrative that the future of AI will be deeply rooted in localized solutions, with India serving as a primary proving ground for this next generation of scalable digital content.[1][2][3]