NEW DELHI: Khosla Ventures-backed AI note-taking unicorn Fireflies AI is looking to pursue acquisitions in India. The company based in the San Francisco Bay Area is targeting application-layer AI and voice AI companies.
“We’re interested in AI application-layer companies that are building for work-related use-cases like work automation,” said Krish Ramineni, co-founder and CEO of. “Maybe a good way to describe it is anything that expands the scope of Fireflies as we become a multi-product company.”
Fireflies is trying to acquire AI-native, AI-first companies that are coming up and startups that have been built in the past couple of years, Ramineni said.
“We’re also looking at voice AI companies that could be a good fit,” he said.
are increasingly attracting interest from global companies and investors, with larger players looking to expand their capabilities through acquisitions and strategic investments. In May, global cybersecurity company Palo Alto Networks completed its acquisition of Bengaluru-based AI infrastructure startup Portkey. Singapore-based data and AI company ADA completed its purchase of Bengaluru-based AI company Algonomy in July.
India recorded 25 AI M&A deals in the startup space worth $980 million till 6 August, already surpassing the $624 million across 33 deals in the whole of 2025, according to Venture Intelligence data.
Ramineni acknowledged the availability of talent in India and the resourcefulness of Indian entrepreneurs in controlling costs.
Scrappy and resourceful
“When capital is constrained, you have to come up with smart, effective ways. How do you use open-source models? How do you host the models on your own? How do you reduce the cost of those models? And Indian startups are so incredible at doing that. And I see a lot of Fireflies’ DNA in how they’re building their companies as well because we had to be scrappy and resourceful in the early days,” he said.
On, Mint reported that Indian AI startups are reducing expenses by optimizing context memory, a feature that allows AI systems to retain previously generated information, user preferences and frequently used responses. Some startups are also hosting open-source AI models on cloud infrastructure located in India.
While Indian AI startups raised $1.04 billion in 2025, startups in the US raised $160 billion, according to data platform Tracxn.
Fireflies has also joined a list of global companies such as Cursor and ChatGPT in introducing India-based pricing for its products.
“We are rolling out a new plan, a pricing plan for Indian customers, like a Fireflies Lite version, so that it’s more affordable for everyone in India. Like a third of the price,” the company said without elaborating.
Fireflies offers subscriptions ranging from $10 a seat per month to $39 a seat per month billed annually, according to its .
Building user communities
“India has a massive user base, but it is also a highly price-sensitive market, which means a flat premium pricing approach is unlikely to drive widespread adoption. This creates the need for tiered and localized offerings, including Lite versions, that can better align with local market dynamics,” said Anushree Verma, senior director analyst at global research and advisory company Gartner. “For many global technology firms, this is also becoming an important strategy for entering and scaling in the Indian market.”
Verma added that for AI vendors, lower-priced offerings can serve as a pathway to building much larger user communities and, over time, creating opportunities for enterprise monetization. In that sense, consumer adoption can become an effective funnel for future enterprise sales.
Fireflies has raised $19 million from investors including Khosla Ventures, Coelius Capital and Canaan across multiple rounds, according to data platform Tracxn. The company said it is not eyeing a fundraise in the near future.
“We may look at capital as a way of doing strategic M&A if we want to acquire some companies. They could be companies in the US, and they could be companies in India. So, that might be one of the reasons we may consider raising capital down the road. But as of now, we can operate as is,” said Ramineni.
Fireflies became a unicorn when its valuation reached $1 billion in June 2025.