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Nova!
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Booting up
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Finances Overview
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Industry Connections
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Active Loans
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Profile
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Cap One Locations
Inspiration
We’ve always been intrigued by how artificial intelligence can transform industries, but one area that felt both urgent and underserved was financial management for small business owners. While large enterprises often have entire finance departments and access to expensive software, small and medium-sized businesses are left juggling spreadsheets, manually tracking loans, or logging into clunky dashboards. We recognized this gap and knew there had to be a better, more intelligent way to handle it.
Our goal was to build something more human and intuitive—a voice-powered AI agent that could take on the burden of financial queries, track customer details, monitor loans, and answer questions in real-time. We wanted something that felt less like software and more like a co-pilot. Something that understood context, handled complexity behind the scenes, and provided crystal-clear responses.
As we dove into development, we realized the potential of integrating technologies like Retell for voice interaction, Azure for hosting and scalability, and Capital One's Nessie API for real-time financial data. It opened up a world where a small business owner could say, "What are my upcoming loan payments?" or "Pull up Agastya Mukherjee's customer profile," and have the answers instantly—accurate, contextual, and accessible from anywhere.
In conclusion, Nova was born out of a desire to level the playing field. We wanted to equip small business owners with the same level of intelligence and automation that larger organizations benefit from—only better, faster, and easier to use. By blending financial APIs with voice and AI technologies, we’re reshaping how businesses interact with their finances.
What it does
Nova is a smart, voice-powered financial agent built to assist business owners in managing customer data, tracking loans, and answering finance-related queries in real-time. It’s like having a CFO on-call—one that’s fast, efficient, and doesn’t take lunch breaks.
Nova empowers users to:
-Retrieve and manage customer information with just a name or ID.
-Track loan history, upcoming payments, and accounts with one voice command.
-Create new customer profiles securely and efficiently.
-Filter customer data using first and last names, or fetch comprehensive financial summaries for individuals.
-Communicate naturally through voice using Retell’s conversational AI integration, enabling a seamless and intuitive user experience.
Whether you're a business owner trying to locate a customer record or a finance assistant looking for upcoming loan obligations, Nova delivers answers instantly and accurately.
How we built it
Nova combines multiple technologies to provide a seamless voice and web-based financial management experience.
Frontend: Built in React, offering a clean, responsive user interface that connects users with financial insights in real-time.
Backend: Powered by Python (Flask) and securely connected to Capital One’s Nessie API for real-time data on customers, accounts, and loans.
Voice AI: Integrated Retell, a cutting-edge conversational AI framework, to handle voice commands and make interactions more human.
Hosting & DevOps: Deployed using Azure for reliable, cloud-based performance, with support for future scalability.
Security & CORS: Carefully implemented CORS policies and method overrides to ensure the app functions smoothly even behind proxies and Azure frontends.
We also used helper utilities to modularize Nessie API calls and streamline authentication, making the system both robust and maintainable.
Challenges we ran into
One of the major challenges we faced was enabling cross-origin voice interactions through the Azure proxy. POST requests from Retell often didn’t align with standard expectations, which required creating POST-only fallback endpoints for robustness.
Another hurdle was handling voice recognition edge cases. If a user says something outside Nova’s capabilities (e.g., “Tell me a joke”), the agent needed to gently redirect them back to supported tasks, such as customer or loan-related queries.
Finally, integrating Capital One’s Nessie API, which isn’t actively maintained, introduced additional issues with error handling, authentication, and occasional data gaps.
Despite these roadblocks, we tackled each one head-on with creative API design, robust error logging, and flexible endpoint logic.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
✅ Full integration of voice and web interfaces using Retell and React.
✅ Built a modular, secure backend in Python using helper functions for reusability and maintainability.
✅ Developed a name-based customer filtering system, allowing business owners to fetch detailed records without knowing the customer ID.
✅ Created a loan-tracking feature that loops through all user accounts and compiles upcoming loans—something that mimics functionality you'd find in enterprise-level software.
✅ Made the entire platform accessible with minimal friction and voice-friendly error handling for seamless interaction.
What we learned
This project pushed us to grow in multiple areas—from backend architecture to human-AI interaction design. We learned how to:
Build voice-first user flows that feel natural, not robotic.
Work with external APIs (like Nessie) that require extra care in error handling and testing.
Design POST-only endpoints to bypass proxy restrictions, which was a critical learning moment in building production-grade web APIs.
Create modular request handling functions that let us scale features faster with fewer bugs.
Most importantly, we learned the value of making complex financial tools feel simple—especially for non-technical users.
What's next for Voice Agent for Finance
We’re just getting started with Nova. Here's what's on the roadmap:
Smarter NLP interpretation: Make the voice agent understand vague or casual phrases and context-switch more naturally.
Dashboard visualizations: Let users visualize their financial health with graphs, pie charts, and dynamic insights.
Authentication + Multi-user support: Allow businesses with teams to assign roles and access levels.
-Mobile-first experience: Optimize the UI for mobile users who need to check finances on the go.
- Wider API integration: Nova can now connect with QuickBooks, Stripe, and Plaid to offer more financial intelligence.
Nova is on a mission to democratize financial management for small businesses—and this is just the beginning.
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