“Build Your First AI Voice Bot in Minutes: From LLM to Live Phone Calls” at DevConf.IN Pune 2026. This is what went down.

Summarize Blog With:

ChatGPTClaudePerplexityGrok

The Room Overflowed

DevConf.IN Pune draws 1,000-2,000 registrations. Developers, researchers, students, engineering managers, and many others are curious about where AI is headed. Our workshop was the last slot of Day 1, starting at 4:15 PM in the VYAS building, Room VY003.

We set up for 50. By the time we started, all 70 seats were taken, and developers were standing in a queue outside trying to get in.

The audience was exactly who we’d hoped for. Backend developers building SaaS products. ML engineers experimenting with voice. Students working on final-year projects. A few engineering managers are scouting voice AI for their teams. Everyone wanted to get their hands dirty.

Part 1: Building the Voice Bot (30 Minutes)

Narayanababu Laveti D V, Principal Architect at Exotel, kicked off the session. Every participant cloned thevoicebot-quick-starter repo that Narayanababu shared, got it running on their machines, and started building from there.

The first 30 minutes covered setting up the LLM backend (participants chose between GPT-4.1 mini and Gemini 2.5 Flash), designing conversation flows and system prompts, adding speech-to-text and text-to-speech, and testing the voice bot locally. All API keys and telephony infrastructure were pre-provisioned, so nobody had to stop and create accounts.

Then the conditions got interesting.

The Wi-Fi was slow. Signal jammers in the conference hall meant mobile networks were essentially dead. Not ideal when your workshop’s climax involves receiving a phone call from your own AI bot.

Nobody stopped. Developers worked with what they had, building and testing their bots over sluggish Wi-Fi, pushing through the connectivity issues. The room’s energy didn’t dip. It concentrated.

Part 2: Phones Actually Ringing

This is the part that changes people.

The second half took every working local voice bot and connected it to real telephony infrastructure. Webhooks, APIs, inbound call handling, real-time voice processing over Exotel’s platform. Participants learned how phone calls actually connect to code and wired up their bots.

Then, in a hall full of signal jammers, a few lucky developers whose phones had managed to hold onto mobile network got the call. Their AI voice bot, the one they’d built from scratch over the last hour, was ringing their phone. They picked up and started talking to it.

Each successful call drew a reaction that rippled across the tables. Developers who couldn’t get mobile signal clustered around those who could, listening in, tweaking prompts together, proving their PoC through someone else’s working connection.

The room had that energy where strangers collaborate because the thing they’re building is more interesting than anything else happening at the conference.

Part 3: Nobody Wanted to Leave (15+ Minutes)

The Q&A was scheduled for 15 minutes. The session was supposed to end at 5:30 PM. It didn’t.

The workshop ran to 90-100 minutes. No break. Zero dropoffs. Developers stayed, asking the kind of questions that told us exactly where India’s voice AI community is headed:

• “How do I handle latency on Indian telecom for sub-800ms response times?”
• “Can I run this with a local LLM for data privacy?”
• “What’s the architecture for scaling to thousands of concurrent calls?”
• “How does regional language support work beyond Hindi?”

Narayanababu answered from real production experience. The same architecture patterns powering Exotel’s CPaaS and Enterprise Contact Center at scale. Not theoretical. These came from systems handling millions of calls daily.

Even after the formal session ended, clusters of developers stayed behind. Refining their bots, swapping ideas, exchanging contacts. The workshop ended. The building didn’t stop.

What Participants Said

Source: Post from Mohammad Assad Sayed

“This was such a great session! I got to learn so many new things, especially the details of exactly how an Al voice bot works. Thanks for the amazing experience sir!! –” Saichandan Gorli 

“Great session and truly hands-on learning experience! Loved working on real voice AI workflows. Looking forward to applying these learnings in upcoming projects. Huge thanks to theExotel Developer Network team for creating such a hands-on, production-level experience 🙌”  Deepak Jakkul

“It WAS INDEED AN EXCELLENT SESSION!!🥳🥳 Kudos to you guys!!! And awaiting for such more!!!❤️🫶🏻” Shraddha Bhoyar

What We Learned

Developers in India are hungry for voice AI infrastructure, not another chatbot tutorial. The number one question we heard wasn’t “how do I build a bot?” It was “how do I connect my bot to an actual Indian phone number?” The AI layer is getting easier every month. The telephony last mile (latency, regional languages, reliable call handling on Indian networks) is where developers get stuck. That’s the gap the Exotel Developer Network exists to close.

Hands-on beats everything. A 75-minute workshop where people build a working product generates more community engagement than slide decks, booth demos, or keynote talks combined. Every one of those 50+ community sign-ups is someone who experienced the platform with their own code. That’s a very different relationship than a lead from a booth scanner.

The real energy was peer-to-peer. The best moments weren’t when we were presenting. They were when developers started helping each other. Debugging each other’s webhooks. Clustering around the few phones with signal to prove their PoC worked. Leaning across tables to fix a call flow. That’s community forming in real time, and you can’t manufacture it with content alone.

What Every Participant Took Home

• Complete source code for a working AI voice bot with live phone integration
• Option to get free Exotel Credits to test their own PoC.
• Production tips from Exotel’s Principal Architect on scaling voice AI
• A direct path into the Exotel Developer Network community
• Access to the 80+ developer WhatsApp group for continued collaboration

What’s Next

Already in the community? Post what you’re building atcommunity.exotel.com. The workshop code, documentation, and step-by-step guides are all there. Other developers from the workshop are already asking questions and sharing what they’ve extended.

Weren’t in the room? Join the community anyway. The same hands-on tutorials we ran at DevConf.IN are available online, and we’re planning virtual sessions soon.

Want this workshop at your campus or company? We’re looking for universities, startup cohorts, and developer communities to partner with. Reach out at edn@exotel.com or post in the community.