IDG Ventures invests in speech recognition solutions firm Uniphore

Global venture capital firm IDG Ventures, which invests in India through its separate local team and focuses on early stage tech sector investments, has invested an undisclosed amount in Chennai-based local language speech recognition solutions firm Uniphore Software Systems Pvt Ltd, according to a press release.

This is part of a Series A round of funding which company raised last month from Infosys' co-founder Kris Gopalakrishnan. Existing investors Sunil Goyal from YourNest also participated in the new round.

The funding will help Uniphore scale its core technology development efforts and expand its footprint in the global market.

"Combination of voice and analytic is an interesting concept. We are excited at the opportunity to partner with Umesh and team as they take this platform globally," said Ranjith Menon, senior VP, IDG Ventures.

Uniphore was started in 2008 by Umesh Sachdev (CEO) and Ravi Saraogi (COO), both alumni of Jaypee University of Information Technology (Himachal Pradesh). The company has worked with over 70 enterprise customers and served over 4 million users. It has offices in India, Philippines and the UAE and  employs 81 people.

Uniphore's other investors include Ray Stata, co-founder and chairman of the board of Analog Devices Inc; IIT Madras' Rural Technology and Business Incubator (RTBI), Villgro Innovations Foundation and the National Research Development Corporation.

IDG Ventures India, a leading technology venture capital fund in India, is a part of IDG Ventures which has over $6 billion under management globally. The company has over 220 investee firms and 10 offices across Asia and North America.

Since January this year, the VC firm has invested in half of a dozen Indian companies including Tripoto Travel Pvt Ltd, Nestaway Technologies Pvt Ltd, Vserv Digital Services Pvt Ltd and others, according to VCCEdge, the research platform of VCCircle.