ETTech | August 13, 2019
Uniphore has raised $51 million in a Series C funding round led by March Capital Partners, as the speech recognition company looks to grow its business in North America.
Chiratae Ventures, Sistema Asia and the Patni family, among others, also participated in the funding round.
The Chennai-based company builds artificial intelligence-based bots that can understand queries and respond to customers, and provides a host of analytics to companies on quality of service.
The company, which is also registered in Palo Alto in the United States, is looking to expand globally, but with co-founder and CEO Umesh Sachdev relocating to the US will focus largely on North America.
“With this new round of funding, we will be able to accelerate our global expansion and better serve our customers by developing and delivering innovative Conversational Service Automation solutions to more organizations around the world,” Sachdev said.
ET reported in July that Uniphore had raised $38 million in fresh funding led by March Capital Partners at an estimated valuation of $130 million. The company did not confirm the funding round at the time. It was unclear if its valuation had changed since the previous report.
Former Cisco chairman John Chambers, who picked up a 10% stake in Uniphore in 2017, said, “Uniphore’s innovative conversational AI solutions address the growing needs of businesses to provide personalized customer experiences more efficiently and effectively. I believe Umesh and his team are well positioned to revolutionize the customer service industry while continuing to expand the market share.”
Uniphore has set up its second base in Silicon Valley, and has been hiring key executives — Annie Weckesser as Chief Marketing and People Officer, Jafar Syed as Chief Strategy and Growth Officer and Karen Smith as Chief Revenue Officer — to help grow its US business.
Uniphore claims business grew by 300% in 2018.