VCCircle | June 29, 2020
YourNest Venture Capital has struck stellar return from its six-year-old investment in Uniphore Software Systems Pvt. Ltd that had raised a big-ticket Series C cheque led by March Capital Partners last year.
The early-stage venture capital firm generated 6.6 times returns on its investment in Uniphore, Sunil Goyal, managing director at YourNest, told VCCircle. The VC firm got Rs 55 crore from its investment of Rs 8 crore in tranches since 2014.
This translates into an internal rate of return (IRR) of around 43%, he added.
This is higher than the 20-30% IRR that venture capital and private equity firms typically chase in rupee terms in India.
YourNest sold its stake to existing investors of Uniphore, said Goyal without disclosing their identities.
The Economic Times first reported the development.
YourNest had first invested in Uniphore in early 2014 along with other co-investors individual and institutional co-investors such as Chiratae Ventures (formerly IDG Ventures India).
The VC firm has earlier exited retail tech startup Betaout and cab booking service company Bookmycab, according to VCCEdge, the research arm of Mosaic Digital. Both of these companies were acquired.
YourNest is currently investing from its second fund of $45 million which is yet to formally make the final close. Goyal recently told VCCircle that the new fund had received most commitments by December last year and its focus is now to deploy the capital.
The second fund has invested in seven companies so far. These include ed-tech startup 3RDFlix Visual Effects Pvt. Ltd and networking platform Lavelle Networks.
Uniphore
The company was founded in 2008 by Jaypee University of Information Technology alumni Umesh Sachdev and Ravi Saraogi. It provides a suite of software-as-a-service products targeting conversational analytics, assistants and conversational security, among others. It counts BNP Paribas, NTT Data and PNB MetLife among its customers.
Last year, Uniphore had raised $51 million in a Series C funding round led by March Capital Partners.
Chiratae Ventures, Sistema Asia, CXO Fund, Iron Pillar and the Patni family had also invested, the Chennai- and California-based conversational artificial intelligence company had said.
Apart from VC firms, Uniphore counts at least two technology industry veterans as its investors—Infosys Ltd co-founder Kris Gopalakrishnan and former Cisco Systems Inc. chairman John Chambers.
Link: YourNest exits voice AI startup Uniphore with stellar returns