Zambia's Caantin is Raising $4M to Scale AI Voice Infrastructure
TLDR
- Zambian artificial intelligence startup Caantin is raising $4 million to expand its AI-powered voice infrastructure and scale beyond Africa
- The company, which automates customer support operations for banks and fintechs using AI voice agents, claims to be nearing $1 million in monthly revenue
- This funding round comes just six months after Caantin pivoted from its previous focus on data analytics to voice-based automation, its fourth major shift since launching
Zambian artificial intelligence startup Caantin is raising $4 million to expand its AI-powered voice infrastructure and scale beyond Africa. The company, which automates customer support operations for banks and fintechs using AI voice agents, claims to be nearing $1 million in monthly revenue and is targeting $10 million in ARR by the end of 2025.
This funding round comes just six months after Caantin pivoted from its previous focus on data analytics to voice-based automation, its fourth major shift since launching in the hospitality sector. The startup can currently process over one million calls daily, serving clients like Fairmoney and Carbon. Carbon CEO Chijioke Dozie is also an investor.
Caantin charges a usage-based rate—₦185 (12 cents) per minute in Nigeria and 4 ZAR (2 cents) per second in South Africa—positioning itself as a telecom-layer SaaS business for financial institutions. These institutions make up a major share of Africa’s largest companies and typically maintain costly, manual customer support operations.
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Key Takeaways
Caantin’s rise reflects a broader trend in emerging markets—automating legacy infrastructure using AI to address scale and cost constraints. In Africa, banks and fintechs still rely on large teams of human agents to call and follow up with customers, particularly for loan recovery and support. Caantin replaces that with AI agents that operate 24/7 with consistent performance. Founder Njawa Mutambo, also behind Kenyan startup TopUp Mama, sees Caantin as a voice infrastructure business similar to what Paystack and Flutterwave have done for payments. “Their growth becomes our growth,” he said, citing the heavy call volume and need for operational efficiency in financial services. The startup’s voice AI technology offers cost-saving advantages in both Africa and Latin America. In Brazil, for instance, where minimum wages are nearly 6x higher than Nigeria’s, Caantin expects stronger returns on automation. The company plans to expand there next, eyeing a market with similar service challenges but higher labour costs.
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