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Sarvam speech-to-text for Bolna AI voice agents

Sarvam's Saaras models transcribe Indian callers for your Bolna voice agent in Hindi, English and 10 more Indian languages, including code-mixed Hinglish.

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Official Documentation
At a glance

How Sarvam AI (STT) fits in the stack

Best for

Turning noisy phone audio into text the agent can reason over.

Use this layer when

Recognition accuracy, language coverage, and latency matter most.

Connects to

Telephony audio upstream and your LLM downstream.

Voice Stack

Speech-to-text is the listening layer

Speech-to-text is the listening layer

This provider converts raw audio into text in real time. It shapes how accurately the agent hears the caller and how natural the back-and-forth feels.

TelephonyPhone Network
→
STTListener
→
LLMReasoning
→
TTSVoice
→
ToolsActions

Last updated

What is Sarvam used for in a Bolna voice agent?

Sarvam is a speech-to-text provider built for Indian languages that transcribes your callers in real time, including Hinglish and other code-mixed speech, using its Saaras models. The docs call it usually the strongest transcriber choice for agents serving Indian callers.

How do I set up Sarvam with Bolna?

  1. Open your agent at platform.bolna.ai and go to the Languages tab.
  2. Select the language you are configuring, then under Transcription set Provider to sarvam and Model to saaras:v4.
  3. Add brand names and places in Keywords (up to 50 terms, saaras:v4 only) and a short description of the call in Context.
  4. To use your own Sarvam account, connect it at platform.bolna.ai/auth/sarvam.

For language codes and biasing limits, see the Sarvam setup guide in the Bolna docs.

Which Sarvam models and languages does Bolna support?

ModelLanguages on BolnaNotes
saaras:v4English (India), Hindi, Bengali, Tamil, Telugu, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Punjabi, Odia, AssameseRecommended. Automatic language detection, global English accents, reads keywords and context
saaras:v3Same 12 languagesSupported. Reads context, not keywords
saaras:v2.5, saarika:v2.5Not listedDeprecated by Sarvam. Existing agents keep working; move them to saaras:v4

Sarvam's other 11 Saaras languages (Urdu, Nepali, Konkani, Kashmiri, Sindhi, Sanskrit, Santali, Manipuri, Bodo, Maithili and Dogri) are not yet available through Bolna.

What can you build with Sarvam and Bolna?

Hinglish sales and support. Callers who switch between English and Hindi mid-sentence are transcribed without the agent reconfiguring its language. See Hindi speech to text for the other Hindi transcribers on Bolna.

All-India customer support. Give each language its own transcriber in one multilingual agent, with Sarvam on the Indian languages.

A fully Indic voice pipeline. Pair Sarvam STT with Sarvam text-to-speech so both listening and speaking are tuned for Indian languages.

Order and account lookups. Pass brand names and a description of the call so terms like PhonePe or order numbers are recognised. On Hindi agents, boosted English terms can come back in Devanagari script.

FAQ

Sarvam AI (STT) on Bolna: frequently asked questions

Twelve today. English (India), Hindi, Bengali, Tamil, Telugu, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Punjabi, Odia and Assamese, on both saaras:v4 and saaras:v3.

Not yet. Sarvam's other 11 Saaras languages, including Urdu, Nepali and Konkani, fail agent creation on Bolna with a "language is not available for the model" error.

Send the plain code, hi. Bolna resolves it to Sarvam's hi-IN locale for you, and hi-IN is rejected.

Yes. saaras:v3 and saaras:v4 are on Bolna's preferred model list, so they are covered by the flat rate. You can also connect your own Sarvam key at platform.bolna.ai/auth/sarvam.

Related

Other providers in this layer

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AssemblyAI

AssemblyAI Universal-3.6 Pro transcribes callers for your Bolna voice agent in 32 languages, with code-switching and keyword plus context biasing.

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Azure Speech-to-Text

Azure Speech-to-Text transcribes callers in real time for a Bolna voice agent, with speaker diarization, language identification and phrase lists of up to 2,000 terms.

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Deepgram

Deepgram is Bolna's default English transcriber, turning caller speech into text with Nova-3, Nova-2 or Flux streaming models on live phone calls.

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Tools & Workflows

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See where Sarvam AI (STT) fits in your production workflow

Use the demo to walk through provider selection, stack tradeoffs, and the exact workflow you want Bolna to automate.

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