Language speech recognition solutions firm Uniphore raises funding from IAN, others

Uniphore Software Systems Pvt Ltd, a Chennai-based Indian language speech recognition solutions firm, has raised an undisclosed amount in funding, led by Nagaraja Prakasam and MV Subramanian - both members of Indian Angel Network (IAN). This round also saw participation from YourNest Angel Fund, and Analog Devices Inc's co-founder Ray Stata. As part of the deal, Prakasam will join the board of Uniphore.

The funding will be primarily used to expand Uniphore's global presence; it will help the firm foray into other non-English speaking regions such as Southeast Asia and the Middle East. Uniphore will also look to strengthen its speech-based products, creating more context-aware, personalised applications.

"Customers today demand personalised service delivery in a language of their choice and Uniphore's speech-based solutions are the most intuitive and scalable way to make this happen", said Umesh Sachdev, co-founder and CEO, Uniphore.

Uniphore was started in 2008 by Umesh Sachdev (CEO) and Ravi Saraogi (COO), both alumni of Jaypee University of Information Technology (Himachal Pradesh). Earlier, Sachdev also co-founded Singularis Technologies, and prior to this he worked at TeNet. Saraogi has vast experience in directing technology teams in initiatives spanning mobile theft security, wireless network development and mobile learning applications.

"In a country of 1.2 billion people where only 250 million speaks English, vernacular speech recognition can enable financial inclusion to information dissemination to farmers. Uniphore is also a great example of solving problems of billion people which opens opportunity for another 4 billion in emerging nations," said Nagaraja Prakasam.

YourNest is a Gurgaon-based angel fund, which invests in technology-enabled business ideas. Its other investments include mycity4kids.com, Proof of Performance, and BookMyCab.com. Ray Stata is a co-founder and former CEO of Analog Devices, who has been active as an investor and board member of more than 40 early-stage technology ventures.

(Edited by Joby Puthuparampil Johnson)