AI Order Taking for Wholesale India: ₹2/min

Every rupee that can leave your account, in one table. These are our own published figures.

GST is separate and applies when you load credits: all figures above are quoted exclusive of GST, and an 18% GST is charged at the point of loading. A ₹10,000 credit load is billed ₹11,800 — ₹10,000 usable plus ₹1,800 GST.

What there is not

• No monthly platform or SaaS subscription.
• No per-seat, per-salesman or per-route fee.
• No minimum monthly minute commitment and no annual contract on usage.
• One prepaid balance for everything — all seven agents draw from the same credits rather than separate meters.

Month one, and why a distributor should load more than the minimum

This is where wholesale differs from every other vertical we write about, so read it before you budget. If you take the free build as a founding client, the first ₹10,000 credit load is consumed like this:

₹3,000 is about 1,500 billed minutes. For a clinic that is a comfortable month. For a distributor it is not. At 1,840 billed minutes a month your credits run dry around day 24; at 5,600 billed minutes they run dry around day 8. So if your retailers call in orders daily, load ₹15,000–₹20,000 for month one rather than the ₹10,000 minimum — a ₹20,000 load is billed ₹23,600 with GST — or set a top-up reminder. At zero balance the agent pauses gracefully rather than failing mid-order, but a paused line during the morning rush is an order lost to the next distributor on the retailer's contact list.

From month 4 the Care Plan becomes optional and that ₹5,000 comes off the monthly run rate.

Every competitor figure below was read on the vendor's own page on 21 Jul 2026 and is recorded with the sentence it came from. Nothing here comes from a search snippet, an AI summary, a title tag or a rival's comparison page — each of those produced at least one false number when we tried it.

Two caveats that keep this table honest. First, Retell AI and Vapi publish in USD only with no India pricing page, so we have deliberately not converted them into rupees. Second, several vendors publish rate tables for *other* vendors — Trikon's page carries per-minute figures for Bolna, Ringg, Vapi, Retell and Bland; Scalify's carries figures for Exotel, Yellow.ai, Ozonetel, Knowlarity and Vapi under an explicit estimates disclaimer. We do not republish any of them. Trikon's Bolna figure contradicts Bolna's own published rate, which is the clearest possible demonstration of why a rival's comparison page is not a source.

The claim we are entitled to make is about terms, not the number: ₹2/min from the very first minute, no subscription, no minimum volume, no lock-in. Six of the sixteen vendors in our ledger require a subscription before you can place a call at all.

5,600 billed minutes is a realistic month for an FMCG or pharma distributor serving around 300 retail outlets who call in orders. Below is what that month costs on each vendor's own published inputs. The totals are our arithmetic, not their quotes — the inputs used are shown so you can redo it.

Read the table properly

The three "cannot be computed" rows are not a rhetorical device. They are the actual outcome of trying to budget a distributor's month against those vendors from public information, and it is the single most useful thing this table shows. If a vendor's overage unit is a conversation rather than a minute, your cost depends entirely on how their system defines a conversation — ask before signing.

VaniAgent's ₹21,999 unlimited tier looks strong at this volume and, on price alone, it is. But it is one concurrent call with a 3-month minimum. For a distributor whose entire order book arrives between 9am and 11am, one line is the constraint that decides everything, which is the subject of the next section but one.

Our own rows are not flattered. At low volume we are expensive per minute, because the ₹2,000 number charge is fixed and does not care how little you use it. The scenarios below show exactly where that bites.

All firms are invented and sized to be realistic rather than flattering. Minutes are billed minutes — each call already rounded up to the next whole minute — and all talk time is at the ₹2/min Bharat Standard rate.

A. "Sri Balaji Traders" — single-godown grocery wholesaler, 60 retail accounts

300 calls a month averaging 2.5 billed minutes = 750 billed minutes. One line. Our number.

Be sceptical of us here, exactly as you should be of everyone else. At 750 minutes the fixed number charge dominates and the ₹2/min headline is not the whole story. If you point your existing shop landline at us, the ₹2,000 disappears and the month is ₹1,500.

B. "Deccan Electricals" — hardware and electrical distributor, 120 retailer accounts

480 order calls at 3 billed minutes = 1,440 minutes, plus 200 rate, stock and delivery-status calls at 2 minutes = 400 minutes. 1,840 billed minutes. One extra concurrent line, because three parties calling at 9:40am is normal.

On a single line the month-4 figure is ₹5,680, a blended ₹3.09 — but you will get busy tones during the rush, and a busy tone in wholesale is an order placed elsewhere.

C. "Vindhya Distributors" — FMCG distributor, around 300 outlets

1,200 order calls at 3 minutes = 3,600, plus 600 enquiry calls at 2 minutes = 1,200, plus 400 outbound reorder calls to their own dormant accounts at 2 minutes = 800. 5,600 billed minutes. Two extra concurrent lines.

This is the volume at which our model is genuinely well suited: the fixed charges become a rounding error and you are paying close to the headline rate. Compare the ₹16,200 against the same volume on published plan pricing in the table above.

D. "Krishna Agencies" — 4 depots across two states, SAP Business One, 18 salesmen on a DMS

We would decline this, or take a single depot as a pilot. High simultaneous volume across locations, an ERP that orders must land inside, and an uptime expectation we cannot underwrite as one engineer. The reasons are in the honest-limits section and they are not marketing modesty.

Is it cheaper than an order-taking clerk?

We are not going to quote you a clerk's salary. We could not find a figure for order-desk staff in Indian wholesale from a source we were willing to cite, and we will not borrow an unsourced one. Use your own payroll number instead — you already know it — and this formula:

> Break-even billed minutes = (your clerk's fully loaded monthly cost − ₹2,000) ÷ ₹2

Add ₹1,500 to the fixed side for each extra concurrent line before running it. And treat the answer as one input, not the decision: a clerk who knows that Ramesh bhai always means the 1kg pack when he says "chhota" is doing something the agent will not do in month one.

Most AI receptionist pages treat concurrency as a footnote. In wholesale it is the whole problem.

A clinic's calls arrive spread across the day. A distributor's do not. Retailers place orders at the start of their own trading day, and the beat is the same every week, so the load is not merely spiky — it is spiky at a predictable, unavoidable hour. A single line answers one call at a time, so at 9:40am everyone else is queued or hearing a busy tone, and a retailer who cannot get through dials the next distributor, because in wholesale the switching cost of a phone call is zero.

So price the lines, not just the minutes:

A rough way to size it: take your busiest hour's call count, multiply by your average call length in minutes, and divide by 60. Sixty calls in the 9–10am hour at 3 minutes each is 180 call-minutes in a 60-minute hour, which needs 3 lines to answer everything without a queue. That configuration is ₹5,000 per 30 days on top of your minutes — and it is still less than most of the monthly plans in the comparison table before a single minute is billed.

This is also where the flat-fee vendors need checking. An unlimited-calling plan on one concurrent call does not solve a 9am rush at any price. Ask every vendor how many simultaneous calls their quoted price covers and what each additional one costs. It is the question that separates a wholesale quote from a receptionist quote.

Described mechanically, with no performance claims attached. All firm and party names are invented.

1. Takes the order, reads it back, confirms it in writing

The agent answers, identifies your firm, recognises the party from the calling number where you have supplied a party list, and takes the order line by line. It handles trade units the way your customers actually say them — peti, bori, carton, dozen, katta, half case — because you define the mapping from those words to your SKUs during the build.

Illustrative exchange, invented firm "Deccan Electricals":

> Retailer: Deccan se bol rahe ho na. Do peti 9 watt LED bhej dena, aur ek bundle 1.5 wire. > Agent: Deccan Electricals. Order noted for Sharma Electricals — 2 cases of 9 watt LED bulb, and 1 bundle of 1.5 sqmm wire. Confirm karu. > Retailer: Haan, aur half case 20 watt bhi. > Agent: Added, half case of 20 watt. Total 3 lines. Main WhatsApp par order bhej deta hoon confirmation ke liye.

The read-back is not optional and not a nicety. A misheard quantity in wholesale is a wrong-goods return, a credit note and a lost morning, so the agent restates every line and gets a yes before it closes the call.

2. Sends the order where you want it

The confirmed order goes out as a WhatsApp message to the retailer and to your order desk, and is written into the order sheet you nominate — a Google Sheet, typically, one row per line item with party code, SKU, quantity, unit and time stamp. Your dispatch team works from that sheet. It does not go into Tally, Busy, Marg, SAP or a DMS; see the honest-limits section.

3. Answers rate and scheme enquiries, from your list only

"Aaj ka rate kya hai" is a routine call on a distributor's line. The agent quotes only from the dated rate list you upload, states the date the rate is effective from, and applies the scheme slabs you have configured. It will not compute a rate it was not given, will not round in the customer's favour, and will not negotiate.

4. Answers stock and delivery status

Stock availability comes from a stock sheet you update, and the agent says how fresh it is — "as per this morning's stock, 9 watt is available" — rather than implying live inventory it does not have. Delivery and dispatch status works the same way: LR number, vehicle, expected day, read from what you have given it.

5. Enforces MOQ, minimum order value and route coverage

The agent knows your minimum order value, your delivery days per route, and which pincodes you actually serve. A new party asking "do you deliver to Kothagudem" gets a straight answer instead of a callback that never happens, and an order below your MOQ gets flagged on the call rather than at the loading bay.

6. Calls your own retailers who have not ordered

You supply the list from your own records — dormant outlets, the Tuesday beat, parties who normally order weekly and have gone quiet. The agent calls within the hours you set, identifies your firm, states why it is calling, and either takes the order or logs the outcome as call-back, not-interested or no-answer.

The rule that does not bend: we call only your own accounts and enquiries. No purchased lists, no scraped numbers, no cold databases, ever. Calling hours are yours to set and are respected. A party who says stop is marked and not called again by that campaign.

7. Speed-to-lead on new retailer enquiries

When a new outlet fills your form or messages your ad, the agent calls back within about 60 seconds while the enquiry is still warm, captures firm name, GSTIN, location and what they stock, and hands you a filled-in row instead of a missed call.

8. Takes an advance or payment link where you require one

For new parties or COD accounts, the agent can send a payment link mid-conversation and confirm the order on receipt. We take no commission on what you collect. WhatsApp fees for the confirmation are billed by Meta directly to your own account with zero markup from us.

Wholesale has two commercial landmines that a general-purpose receptionist page never has to think about. We handle both by refusal, not by cleverness.

The rate must never be invented

Margins in distribution are thin enough that a bot quoting a rate below your list price is not an embarrassment, it is a loss. So:

When a party pushes for a better rate — and they will, because that conversation is the heart of the trade — the agent says the rate is fixed as per the list and offers to connect you or take a callback. That is a deliberate design decision. If your business runs on per-party negotiated pricing decided call by call, an order-taking agent will frustrate you and you should know that before you buy, not after.

Outstanding balances must never be read out to whoever calls

"Mera outstanding kitna hai" is a routine question and a genuine disclosure risk, because the person on the phone may be a shop employee, a competitor, or someone who dialled the wrong number. Our default is that the agent does not disclose ledger balances at all and routes the caller to you. If you want it to answer, we build it against a verification rule you sign off on — recognised calling number plus a party code, typically — and you accept the residual risk in writing. We would rather have that conversation once at build time than have it after.

Data and conduct

• Your party list, rate list and stock sheet are yours. We do not sell, share or reuse them.
• Call recording is optional at +₹0.10/min. If you do not enable it, calls are not recorded.
• Transcripts and call outcomes are available to you.
• We are not going to recite the DPDP Act at you with section numbers. Consent for calling and messaging your parties sits with your firm as the party holding the relationship. Take your own legal advice before running an outbound campaign at scale, and ask any vendor who quotes the Act confidently whether their architecture actually implements what they are reciting.

Five situations where another vendor genuinely serves you better. The rest of this page is only credible if this section is honest.

1. Your orders must land inside your ERP

This is our biggest real gap and it is the exact thing the best-ranking wholesale content on this topic is about. Order-entry agents that ingest from email, PDF, spreadsheet and EDI and write validated orders straight into SAP, Dynamics, Odoo or NetSuite exist, and that is a materially different product from ours. We have no ERP or DMS integration — not Tally Prime, Busy, Marg, SAP Business One, Zoho Books, Bizom or FieldAssist. We hand you a confirmed order in a sheet and on WhatsApp. If your clerk retypes that into Tally, we have taken the phone off their desk but left the keyboard work in place. For many small and mid-size distributors that is still the bulk of the pain, because the phone is what breaks the day. For a distributor whose real cost is order-entry keystrokes, buy the ERP-integrated product.

2. You carry thousands of near-identical SKUs

A catalogue of 4,000 items where six variants differ only by pack size, colour code or wattage is a hard voice problem, and we will not pretend otherwise. We can build disambiguation prompts for your top-selling confusable pairs, and the read-back catches a lot. But if your order calls routinely involve part numbers dictated character by character, expect a longer build, more correction turns per call, and more billed minutes per order. Ask us for a live test on your ten most-confused SKUs before you commit.

3. Your pricing is negotiated on every call

Covered above, and worth repeating as a disqualifier. If every party has a different rate arrived at by conversation, the agent's refusal to negotiate removes the thing your business actually does on the phone.

4. Your call volume is genuinely low

At 750 billed minutes a month the fixed ₹2,000 number charge makes our blended rate ₹4.67, which is not a bargain against several published flat rates. If you take twenty order calls a week, either point your existing line at us so that charge disappears, or stay with what you have.

5. You need proof, an SLA and a support rota

We have no wholesale case study and no distributor testimonial, because we are pre-revenue in this vertical with founding seats still open and a hard rule against publishing proof we do not have. There is one engineer here — Rohith Sriramula, working from Paloncha in Bhadradri Kothagudem, Telangana — and no support desk. If your procurement needs a signed uptime commitment across four depots, buy from a company that has the rota to back it. The only proof we can offer is that you can call the agent yourself and judge it, rather than judge a screenshot of a testimonial.

Take this list to us and to everyone else. The answers are more revealing than the demo.

1. What is your per-minute rate in rupees, on a page I can read, and what do I have to commit to before I get it. Volume floor, monthly plan, contract length, setup fee. Several published India rates in the table above are attached to a minimum volume, an enterprise quote or a plan you must buy first.
2. How many calls can it answer at the same time on that price, and what does each extra line cost. For a distributor this matters more than the per-minute rate.
3. Is billing per whole minute or per second, and do I pay for ringing. Ours is whole minutes of talk time, so a 40-second stock enquiry bills a full minute. That rounding is a real cost on short calls and we say so.
4. What is your overage unit — a minute, a call, or a "conversation". If it is a conversation, get the definition in writing before you sign.
5. Where does the confirmed order land. Ask for the specific system name. "Integrates with your ERP" is not an answer; "writes a sales order into Tally Prime via X" is.
6. Read me the exact script for when a party asks for a better rate. And for when a party asks for their outstanding balance.
7. What happens to an order line the agent is not sure about. Silent guess, or explicit read-back and confirmation.
8. What do I pay in month one before a single order is taken. Setup, plan fee, number, minimum credit load, onboarding, GST.
9. Where do WhatsApp message fees land — on your invoice with a markup, or on my own Meta account.
10. Will you ever call a number I did not give you. The only acceptable answer is no.
11. Every statistic on your website — which distributor, over what period, measured how. If it cannot be sourced, discount the page. That test applies to this page too, which is why the only numbers on it are our own published prices, competitor figures read on their own pages on 21 Jul 2026, and arithmetic you can redo yourself.

Related reading: AI calling agent price in India 2026, inbound vs outbound AI calling, WhatsApp AI agent for business in India, and the full pricing page.

To see the arithmetic on your own numbers, use the missed call calculator, or tell us your problem on WhatsApp at +91 93923 98750 and describe how order calls are handled at your godown today. If an order-taking agent fits, we will quote the numbers on this page. If an ERP-integrated product fits better, we will say that instead.