Toma´s AI voice agents gain traction at car dealerships, secure a16z funding

Toma, a voice technology startup founded by Monik Pamecha and Anthony Krivonos in early 2024, has rapidly shifted its focus from banking and healthcare to car dealerships—a less regulated but phone-demanding industry. The pivotal moment occurred when overwhelmed car dealers reached out for help managing their high volume of customer calls. Embracing this new direction, the founders ran a test by cold-calling dealerships nationwide, discovering that only about 45% of these calls were actually answered.

To better grasp dealership operations, Pamecha and Krivonos personally visited a dozen locations across Oklahoma and Mississippi, immersing themselves in day-to-day activities, sharing meals with staff, and even partaking in regional traditions. This grassroots approach not only enabled them to refine their artificial intelligence voice agent but also built trust and relationships with potential clients, eventually securing customers who warmly embraced their hands-on commitment. These efforts yielded results: Toma´s platform is now deployed at more than 100 dealerships nationwide, helping automate tasks such as setting service appointments, managing parts orders, and fielding sales inquiries.

Fueling their momentum, Toma landed a significant investment round led by a16z, with backing from Y Combinator, the Scale Angels Fund, and industry voice Yossi Levi, known as Car Dealership Guy. Levi highlighted the impact of unpredictable call volumes and the difficulty of consistently training staff—a gap Toma’s technology is poised to fill by standardizing customer experiences. Toma’s onboarding process includes a week or two of custom training on actual dealership calls, adapting to each business’s unique workflows and promotions. Calls that require handoff to human agents are analyzed to improve the artificial intelligence model’s effectiveness for that specific client. The company operates on a subscription basis, with additional features available as dealerships choose to expand artificial intelligence involvement in their operations. With its first dedicated sales employee only recently hired, Toma is scaling fast, and the founders attribute their product’s success to truly understanding—and sharing—the pains of their core customers.