Is AI Calling Legal in India? TRAI Rules for AI Voice Agents (2026)

Short answer: yes. A business in India can use an AI voice agent to answer calls and to call customers, as long as it follows the same rules as any other business caller. Those rules come from the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), in the Telecom Commercial Communications Customer Preference Regulations (TCCCPR), which an amendment tightened in February 2025.

This guide explains what the rules mean for AI calls in plain English. It isn't legal advice: for your own business, confirm the details with your telecom provider or a lawyer.

Answering calls with AI

When a customer calls you, an AI receptionist can answer. Good practice, and what Nimmi does on every call, is to say at the start that the caller is speaking with an automated assistant and that the call may be recorded. Then the caller knows what they're talking to, and can ask for a person.

Calling customers: consent comes first

Outgoing calls are where the rules matter. TRAI separates commercial calls into two kinds:

• Promotional calls sell or advertise something.
• Service and transactional calls are about something the customer is already doing with you, like a booking, an order or an enquiry they made.

Under the 2025 amendment, explicit consent for service calls lasts at most seven days unless TRAI directs otherwise. If promotional content is mixed into a service call, the whole call counts as promotional. In practice: call people back about what they asked for, soon after they asked, and keep sales pitches out of service calls.

The right number series

Promotional calls must come from numbers in the 140 series. Service and transactional calls are moving to the 160 series. Using an ordinary 10-digit mobile number for commercial calls can lead to all of a sender's telecom resources being disconnected for up to two years. Ask your telecom provider which series your calls should use before you start calling lists.

Do Not Disturb and opt-outs

Promotional calls can't go to numbers on the national Do Not Disturb (DND) registry unless the person has given you explicit consent. When someone asks you to stop calling, stop, and keep a do-not-call list of your own. After an opt-out, you can't ask that person for consent again for 90 days.

Complaints add up quickly

The amendment lowered the bar for action: five valid complaints within ten days are enough. Penalties start with a temporary bar on outgoing calls and go up to disconnection and blacklisting for repeat offences. Calling only people who want to hear from you is also simply better business.

A checklist for AI calls in India

• Say the call is automated and may be recorded, at the start of every call.
• Call only people who asked for a call or agreed to one, and record when and how they agreed.
• Keep follow-ups inside the consent window: stop about a week after their last conversation, unless they agreed to more.
• Honour "don't call me" at once, and keep a do-not-call list.
• Use the number series your provider gives you for each kind of call.
• Keep calls to sensible hours, and skip holidays.
• Delete recordings when you no longer need them.

How Nimmi handles it

Nimmi's AI voice agent says it's automated and may be recorded on every call, honours opt-out phrases and adds the number to your do-not-call list, and only dials people who asked to be called or were on a list you confirmed they agreed to. Its follow-ups stop seven days after someone's last conversation by default, stay inside the calling hours and days you set, and record why each call was allowed.

Sources: TRAI's TCCCPR 2018 and its February 2025 amendment, as summarised by Sigma Chambers and Rootle. Details vary between summaries, so check the current text with your provider.