Hindi AI voice agents for collections call Indian borrowers in Hindi or Hinglish. Under RBI's rules, they make no recovery calls before 8 a.m. or after 7 p.m., never harass or call persistently, and place service calls from 1600-series numbers. The approved Hindi opening plays as fixed text, and each call's recording stays on servers you choose.
Key Takeaways
- RBI's 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. window becomes the campaign's calling hours.
- Approved Hindi notices play as fixed text or recordings, never live translations.
- On Exotel or Vobiz, the agent books a callback when a person is needed.
A recovery call placed after 7 p.m. breaks RBI's rules, whoever or whatever makes it. We cover what RBI expects, the fixed Hindi opening, calling hours and counts, Hindi and Hinglish speech, handover to a person and keeping records in India with Dograh. For the wider field, see our guide to compliance disclosure calls.
What RBI expects on a recovery call
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) sets the conduct rules for lenders and the recovery agents who call for them, and an AI agent calling on a lender's behalf falls under the same rules. RBI's rules for recovery agents bar intimidation or harassment of any kind, and they name persistent calling and calls before 8:00 a.m. or after 7:00 p.m. as examples. They apply to banks, NBFCs, cooperative banks and asset reconstruction companies.
The number the call comes from matters too. RBI's rule on call numbers has lenders make service and transaction calls only from 1600-series numbers, and promotional calls only from 140-series numbers with the customer's consent. Other 10-digit numbers are out, including through partners. A collection call is a service call, so it goes out from the lender's 1600-series number, and it should not carry an offer.
Record-keeping is tightening for banks. RBI's Fourth Amendment Directions for commercial banks come into force on January 1, 2027. Banks will document the time and number of recovery calls, keep a record of each call for six months, and take steps such as telling the borrower the call is recorded. The hours stay 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. Small finance, payments, regional rural and local area banks are outside these particular directions, and NBFCs should check the version that covers them.
The fixed Hindi opening
The opening line names the lender and the reason for the call in approved Hindi. Put it in the Greeting Text on the Start Call node, where it plays word for word as the call connects, or use a recording of a person reading it. Allow Greeting Interruption starts switched on, so turn it off and the borrower hears the whole line.
When you do not know the borrower's language, open in both, since the greeting plays before the agent can hear which one they speak. A bank that tells borrowers the call is recorded can put that notice in the same fixed opening:
"नमस्ते, hello. यह कॉल Shakti Finance की ओर से है, और इसे रिकॉर्ड किया जा रहा है।"
Every Hindi line your compliance team needs is written and approved once, then played as fixed text or a recording. The model never translates a notice during the call. Account details wait for the identity check, and anything that must be said after it plays as Transition Speech on the pathway that follows a passed check.
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Calling hours and call counts
RBI's hours turn into campaign settings. Set the campaign's time zone to Asia/Kolkata and keep its calling window inside 8 a.m. to 7 p.m., with some margin at each end. India has one time zone, so one window covers the whole list.
Persistent calling has no fixed number in RBI's rules, so your lender sets its own limit and your system keeps the count per borrower. A campaign can retry from 0 to 10 times with a delay between attempts, on busy, no answer or voicemail. Keep retries low, and let your system remove a borrower from the next list once they reach your limit or ask not to be called.
Hindi and Hinglish speech
Hindi collection calls are rarely pure Hindi. Borrowers mix in English words for loans, EMIs and dates, and the agent has to hear both. Dograh offers several ways to do that.
Sarvam's speech-to-text models, Saarika v2.5 and Saaras v3, both support Hindi (hi-IN), and its Bulbul v3 and Bulbul v4 Flash voices speak it. Its 105B language model is also available. Another route is Deepgram Flux with Hindi and English as Language Hints, which suits callers who switch between the two. Add borrower names and local terms to the agent's Dictionary so the speech model hears them correctly.
Test on real phone calls, not a browser. Phone audio arrives at 8 kHz, and accents vary across regions, so record a sample of your own borrowers' calls and compare models on them. Our post on multilingual voice agents covers language detection in more depth, and the IIT Delhi Alumni Day calls ran in Hindi, English and Hinglish on Dograh.
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When the borrower needs a person
A borrower who has lost a job or disputes the amount needs a person, and the phone provider decides how that happens. On Twilio, Telnyx, Plivo, Cloudonix and Asterisk ARI, Transfer Call can hand the borrower to a collections officer. The officer's phone rings first, and the borrower joins only after the officer picks up.
On Exotel and Vobiz numbers, common in India, the agent books a callback request when the borrower needs a person. It records the reason and a good time to call, and writes both to your system through an HTTP API tool so an officer calls back within your hours. Our post on AI voice agents for fintech lending covers hardship and verification on lending calls.
Keeping the records in India
Recordings of recovery calls are personal data, and many lenders want them on Indian servers. Because Dograh is self-hostable, a lender can run it on its own servers in India and keep recordings and transcripts there. What it runs is the call flow, the tools and the telephony, and the speech and language models that hear and answer the borrower sit in a separate layer the lender picks.
That second layer decides where call audio goes. If you use a model provider's API, the audio reaches that provider, wherever its servers are. Audio stays in India only with models you run there yourself. Out of the box, a self-hosted install also sends anonymous usage telemetry, which stops once you set ENABLE_TELEMETRY=false and remove POSTHOG_API_KEY.
A lender running it on its own servers pays no per-minute platform fee, though the servers, model keys and phone minutes still have a cost, and Dograh Cloud adds its own 1¢-a-minute platform fee. Our page on self-hosted voice AI agents in India covers the setup. Treat the RBI points here as general information, and confirm which directions apply to your lender with counsel.
Glossary
- Recovery agent
- A person or firm that collects overdue loans for a lender. RBI holds the lender responsible for how its recovery agents call, including an AI agent calling on its behalf.
- 1600-series number
- A phone number range in India reserved for service and transaction calls from regulated lenders, so borrowers can tell a genuine service call from a promotional or fraudulent one.
- Hinglish
- Speech that mixes Hindi and English, often within one sentence. A collection agent needs a speech-to-text setup that hears both, such as Sarvam's Hindi models or Deepgram Flux with Hindi and English hints.
- Callback request
- A note the agent writes to your system with the reason and a good time to call. On Exotel or Vobiz numbers, it is how a borrower who needs a person reaches one.
