We like to believe we’re good at reading people.

A handshake. A pause before answering. A subtle shift in tone. In person, we trust our instincts.

But what happens when business moves to Zoom calls, recorded depositions, remote hiring and global sales conversations?

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In Episode 18 of 6ixCast, AI and Trust: Enhancing Trust in Business Transactions with AI, host Waruna Kulawansha speaks with Chandra De Keyser, CEO & Co-Founder of Voicera, and Ashish Malpani, CGO of Voicera, about a bold idea:

Can AI help us measure sincerity in digital communication?

And more importantly, should it?

From Engineering to Emotional Intelligence

Chandra De Keyser’s career spans startups, global enterprises and public institutions. An engineer by training with decades of leadership experience, he has seen both bureaucratic stagnation and startup velocity.

What excites him most isn’t scale; it’s impact.

He shares a philosophy that shapes Voicera’s culture:

“The world belongs to the people who get stuff done.”

That mindset, action over perfection, runs deep. Chandra speaks candidly about the dangers of over-engineering products. In fast-moving sectors like AI, waiting for perfection can mean missing the window entirely.

Ashish Malpani brings a complementary perspective. With over 25 years in product, marketing and technical leadership roles across global organizations, he sees trust not as a soft value, but as a measurable business driver.

Today’s customer relationships are no longer one-time transactions. They’re ongoing conversations. And in digital environments, those conversations lack the physical cues we once relied on.

That gap is where Voicera operates.

The Core Problem: Trust in a Digital-First World

We now hire remotely. Negotiate remotely. Close deals remotely. Even witness depositions and legal testimonies increasingly happen online.

Ashish frames the challenge clearly: in the physical world, we read body language and tone instinctively. In the digital world, that layer has eroded.

As he explains, trust drives efficiency. Without it, businesses hesitate. They double-check decisions. They delay.

Voicera’s mission is simple but ambitious:

“We want to improve the trust in business Communications.”

Not by fact-checking what someone says. Not by building a lie detector. But by analyzing nonverbal signals (tone, facial expression, modulation, emotional cues), to provide decision support.

Chandra is clear about the positioning:

“We’re positioning the product as a decision support system. We’re not saying you are lying or you’re telling the truth.”

This distinction matters.

Voicera does not replace human judgment. It enhances it.

What Voicera Actually Does

Voicera combines:

• Large language model (LLM) capabilities (to understand what is being said)
• Emotional analytics (to understand how it’s being said)
• Sincerity scoring (to highlight potential inconsistencies or anomalies)

As Chandra explains, traditional LLMs can summarize conversations. But they don’t capture emotional context. Voicera adds that missing layer.

This could apply to:

• Legal witness depositions
• HR interviews and remote hiring
• Sales negotiations and contract renewals
• Investor-founder conversations
• Customer sentiment tracking beyond NPS surveys

Instead of manually reviewing hours of video or audio, a user could be guided toward key segments where tone or emotional signals diverge from the norm.

It’s not about accusation. It’s about focus.

In a world drowning in digital communication, attention is the scarcest resource.

A New Frontier in AI

Many organizations rush into AI adoption without first building structured and standardized data systems. Without that foundation, even the most advanced models struggle to deliver meaningful results.

Voicera represents a different, emerging layer of AI maturity.

Instead of optimizing product data or automating workflows, it addresses a more human challenge: emotional and behavioural interpretation at scale.

Chandra calls it “a new frontier of AI.”

While many startups build AI as a feature, Voicera builds it as a behavioural analytics engine. Their differentiation lies not in building another LLM. But in combining proprietary datasets, synthetic data and behavioural psychology models to interpret sincerity.

As Chandra notes:

“AI is a means to an end.”

The end, in this case, is better decision-making.

The Ethics Question

Whenever AI enters emotionally sensitive territory, ethics and privacy become central.

Voicera’s approach is privacy-first.

Ashish explains that data does not need to leave a customer’s environment. Models can run in private cloud infrastructures. This ensures sensitive legal or enterprise communications remain protected.

In a Canadian context, where data governance and regulatory compliance are critical, this architecture matters.

Chandra also raises an important caution for businesses adopting AI more broadly. During the rapid rise of public LLM tools, many companies fed proprietary data into external systems without fully understanding intellectual property implications.

His advice:

Experiment, but read the fine print.

Adoption should be deliberate. It’s not impulsive.

Building in a Post Hype AI Market

Unlike the dot-com era, today’s investors expect more than an idea.

Chandra and Ashish bootstrapped Voicera before pursuing significant external funding. They focused on R&D, product development and pilot validation before chasing capital.

This reflects a broader shift in the innovation ecosystem.

AI startups today must demonstrate:

• Real enterprise traction
• Clear product-market alignment
• Deployable infrastructure (public and private cloud options)
• Responsible data practices

Chandra is transparent about where they stand:

“We are close, but we’re not there yet.”

Product-market fit, for them, means enterprise customers integrating Voicera into workflows. It’s not just pilot experimentation.

That realism signals maturity in a space often driven by hype.

Leadership Lessons Beyond AI

Beyond technology, the episode offers practical leadership insights relevant to Canadian founders and enterprise leaders alike.

1. Speed Beats Perfection

Over-engineering kills momentum. Ship thoughtfully, but ship.

2. Clarity Drives Remote Alignment

Ashish emphasizes transparent objectives and measurable impact across distributed teams. In global environments, clarity replaces proximity.

3. Trust Is the Real Currency

Whether building teams, raising capital or serving customers, trust determines velocity.

Ironically, Voicera’s founders built their own partnership remotely, without the tool they are now creating.

That speaks to a deeper truth: technology can enhance trust, but it cannot replace character.

Where This Matters Most

For Canadian enterprises navigating digital transformation, the broader takeaway isn’t simply about sincerity detection.

It’s about recognizing that AI’s next wave will move beyond automation and into interpretation.

Customer experience will not just be measured through surveys. But through live sentiment insights.
Recruitment could extend beyond résumé screening into behavioural analytics.
Legal and compliance functions may rely on AI-assisted emotional mapping.

These shifts raise questions. But they also open opportunities.

The companies that thoughtfully integrate AI as a decision-support layer, rather than a decision-maker, will likely move faster and more confidently in uncertain markets.

The Human Motivation Behind It All

When asked what keeps them motivated after decades in leadership, both founders return to one theme: impact.

Chandra says:

“It’s all about the team.”

Ashish echoes:

“The impact is humongous.”

They’re not chasing novelty. They’re building toward a belief that trust in digital business can be measurable, improvable, and scalable.

Even if Voicera becomes foundational infrastructure or a specialized enterprise layer remains to be seen.

But the conversation highlights something larger:

In an increasingly digital economy, trust itself is becoming a technological problem.

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If this episode sparked questions about AI, emotional intelligence or the future of digital trust, we invite you to watch the full conversation with Chandra De Keyser and Ashish Malpani on 6ixCast.

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Because as AI evolves, one thing remains constant:

Business still runs on human judgment.

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