Reshaping communication in the service industry. How the Ukrainian startup HAPP works
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In our recurring Who Are These People segment, Vector offers founders an opportunity to discuss their projects, covering aspects such as their products, marketing strategies, monetisation, investments, and plans. The focus this time is on HAPP, a Ukrainian startup developing a B2B SaaS AI-powered voice assistant that engages with clients over the phone.
Vector’s editor-in-chief Yuliia Tkach interviewed Viacheslav Saloida, CEO and co-founder, about the product’s features, promotion, investments, and plans.
Conception
HAPP has two co-founders:
- Viacheslav Saloid, CEO. With over 8 years of IT experience, he began as a developer and later transitioned into team lead and project manager roles. Over the past few years, he’s been engaged in developing his own products.
- Andrii Furman, CTO. He brings over 10 years of sales experience and 5 years in business analytics and automation.
The two met when Viacheslav showcased his earlier project, RESTY — a platform for the restaurant business. After discussing common market «pain points» in the autumn of 2024, they teamed up to develop an AI-powered voice assistant for businesses.
«Our initial scope did not include building a voice assistant. The first step was call analytics: transcriptions, assessing service quality, and generating automated feedback for managers. Despite gaining initial clients and market presence, it soon became evident that challenging big telephony companies for these features was a “dead-end” play.
The shift in focus happened when a friend contacted us with a request: to have an AI answer calls on his Ukrainian phone number. We tried to integrate readily available solutions (like Twilio) and found that they lacked compatibility with local telecom providers. We then built the first iteration of HAPP, using a GSM module that interfaced directly with a computer.
Viacheslav explains: «We subsequently moved past custom hardware and integrated through IP telephony, crafting a modular AI that’s attachable to a small business’ mobile number as well as a corporate communications system.
There are seven specialists in the team. They are currently seeking an Integration Engineer (telephony/CRM), a Partnerships Manager, a CEO for business scaling, and a Business Analyst.
Product and audience
HAPP is an AI-powered voice assistant designed to interact with customers by phone, mimicking a human agent. Simply put, it receives inbound calls, manages reservations, processes questions, can redirect to a human agent, and interfaces with CRM.
According to the co-founder, HAPP was developed for service-oriented businesses, recognising that voice communication is a crucial customer touchpoint.
No mock-ups of the end-user platform are available at this time: the platform is in conceptual design, and the startup anticipates launching it soon, so the AI-powered voice assistant currently serves as an internal technology the team implements for businesses.
The startup’s primary audience:
- restaurants, hotels, clinics, e-learning platforms, and delivery service providers;
- businesses experiencing heavy call volumes, for both incoming and outgoing calls;
- organisations looking for scalable solutions without expanding their support staff.
«To them, HAPP isn’t simply a ‘bot’; it’s a sophisticated voice front office that offers quick, accurate, and seamless interactions. Our AI-powered assistant is configured to align with each company’s unique style, values, and objectives.
Our work with Ukrainian businesses is ongoing, and we are now in active preparation for scaling our presence in Eastern Europe. We handle thousands of actual calls each month.
The global Total Addressable Market (TAM) for AI-powered voice technology is projected to be over $ 29 billion by 2028, and we identify a significant unaddressed niche in Eastern Europe, where businesses demand local, rapid, and secure solutions.
We’ve successfully tested and launched our LLM model on a private server, are using open-source text-to-speech and speech-to-text tools, and are currently progressing towards building a complete stack — from speech recognition to voice synthesis».
Business model and marketing strategy
HAPP is a SaaS subscription platform, exclusively geared towards the B2B sector. The team discontinued the pay-as-you-go model after some testing, and implemented monthly plans with clear hourly limits.
- Basic plan: $ 200/month, covering voice AI and call analytics;
- Extended plan: $ 500/month, covering personalisation, training, reports, and adaptable configurations;
- $1000/month and above, covering CRM/ERP integrations, API compatibility, custom scenarios for corporate clients.
The startup’s marketing strategy involves developing an autonomous funnel, with elements like automatic demos, a referral programme, and integration support. The next major step is market entry into Eastern Europe, where HAPP will be positioned as an infrastructure solution.
Investments
They raised $ 50,000 from a private business angel during the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) stage. They’ve initiated a pre-seed round, targeting $ 350,000–500,000 for autonomous voice infrastructure development, hoping to find a strategic partner or fund in addition to financing.
«Our goal is to discontinue reliance on external providers (OpenAI, ElevenLabs) and instead launch our proprietary LLM, TTS, and STT models on local servers. This unlocks opportunities for greater security, customisation, and independence for both us and our clients».
Plans
«Our long-term goal is to build a truly autonomous voice assistant that’s independent from outside providers, runs on companies’ own infrastructure, and provides complete data privacy and command.
Short-term goals include:
- localising the full voice stack on their own facilities in Ukraine;
- enabling every business to deploy its own private AI-powered assistant;
- recruiting ML developers to customise models for client-specific needs.
This signifies more than mere optimisation. This means an attempt to reshape communication in the service industry. We are building an infrastructure designed to scale while maintaining privacy, flexibility, and control. This is our strategic priority for the upcoming years», — summarised the co-founder.
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