How an Indian man turned 'missed calls' into million dollar business
Apurva Shrivastava and Tyson Chen founded Avoca, a company that uses AI voice agents to handle missed calls for home service businesses. The startup aims to capture lost revenue for plumbers, electricians, and other physical economy trades.
Why it matters
The success of this startup demonstrates the practical application of AI in solving operational inefficiencies for small businesses.
Take a look at your phone right now. How many missed calls do you see? For most of us, that’s just a number sitting on the lock screen. But for Apurva Shrivastava, an Indian-origin man, that number turned into a business model from which he built a company now valued at close to 8,300 crore rupees.Meet Apurva Shrivastava, the MIT engineer who built a career on missed callsApurva Shrivastava grew up in Michigan, where his parents ran a small business. As a teenager, he would help them. It was during this time that he noticed how every missed call was a job walking out of the door. The customer would call someone else and, just like that, it would affect their business.Shrivastava studied computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
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