BENGALURU, July 02, 2026 – ToneTag, India’s leading deep-tech platform, has officially unveiled eKosha, a revolutionary voice-first business assistant designed to bridge the gap between India’s 80+ million micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) and the formal banking ecosystem. By turning the humble merchant counter into an intelligent, always-on banking touchpoint, eKosha empowers financial institutions to move beyond simple payment acceptance and into deep, continuous merchant engagement.
For decades, the point-of-sale terminal has been viewed strictly as a gateway for transactions. ToneTag is changing that narrative. With eKosha, the payment counter is transformed into an intelligent banking endpoint. This device provides merchants with direct access to a suite of financial services—ranging from instant support and credit facilities to government schemes and business insights—all managed through simple, natural language conversations in the user’s native tongue.
The primary hurdle for banks has traditionally been the cost and complexity of maintaining physical engagement with millions of distributed merchants. eKosha solves this by creating a direct, frictionless banking channel that requires no new infrastructure investment, no app downloads, and, crucially, no shift in established merchant behavior.
At the heart of eKosha lies ToneTag’s proprietary Analog Edge AI architecture. Unlike cloud-dependent systems that require constant, high-bandwidth connectivity and expensive data processing, eKosha processes AI inference locally on the device itself.
This technological breakthrough serves several purposes:
- Offline Reliability: By processing voice interactions on the edge, eKosha remains functional even in environments with poor or intermittent internet connectivity.
- Cost Efficiency: Running inference locally reduces the astronomical costs associated with cloud-based AI, making advanced banking services economically viable for the smallest merchants.
- Security & Speed: Keeping data processing local enhances security and reduces latency, providing a seamless, real-time experience that feels natural rather than robotic.
This architecture is underpinned by ToneTag’s Small Action Language Model (SALM), which is optimized to understand and respond to regional language queries without the need for sophisticated smartphones or digital literacy. This capability is built on over a decade of ToneTag’s experience in transmitting secure data over soundwaves, leveraging the inherent advantages of analog mediums to create a system that is robust, efficient, and uniquely difficult to replicate.
For financial institutions, eKosha is more than just a tech upgrade; it is a strategic tool to improve the bottom line while deepening relationships. By acting as a virtual “relationship manager” stationed at every merchant’s counter, eKosha enables banks to:
- Reduce Operational Costs: Banks can decrease merchant servicing costs by up to 60% by automating support and engagement.
- Improve Retention: Through daily, personalized interaction, eKosha has been shown to reduce merchant churn from the industry standard of 15–20% down to 6–9%.
- Drive Revenue: The device facilitates faster loan origination and enables banks to effectively double cross-sell opportunities per merchant by delivering relevant financial products at the point of sale.
“The merchant counter has always been at the centre of India’s commerce,” said Kumar Abhishek, Founder and CEO of ToneTag. “With eKosha, we are reimagining it as the centre of merchant banking. For the first time, banks have a dedicated, always-on engagement channel embedded at the point where merchants conduct business every day. This fundamentally changes how banks serve, support, and build relationships with merchants, while helping them drive deeper engagement, improve service efficiency, and unlock new growth opportunities.”
The Future of Merchant Banking
eKosha represents the next phase of India’s financial digitization. By converging payments, banking, and AI, it removes the friction that currently prevents millions of small businesses from accessing full-scale financial services. As banks seek to lower merchant re-acquisition costs and build richer, data-backed merchant intelligence for safer credit decisions, eKosha provides the scalable, reliable foundation required to power the future of MSME banking.
ToneTag The Brand of Naffa Innovations is a Bengaluru-based deep-tech platform that transforms everyday devices—such as phones, POS machines, and wearables—into secure, intelligent financial endpoints using sound-based technology, AI, and blockchain. Recognized for its innovation, including an RBI HaRBInger win, the company operates at a massive scale across India and is expanding globally.
Learn more at https://www.tonetag.com/
