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With Uniphore closing out another record fiscal year and now into a new one, it’s a great time to reflect on our journey. This spring, we announced another noteworthy milestone and continued momentum for Uniphore: a $140 million Series D funding round, and since then, have increased the total amount raised in this round to $150 million following enthusiastic interest from investors.
Since the announcement, many people have reached out and congratulated me. In many cases, they have asked what is driving this growth and how do we stay ahead in such a crowded space? As I look back over the past 12-15 months, I would have to say, it comes down to differentiated products and true innovation. Let me explain by sharing a true story.
We had been working with a telecom company in the US on a bid to help their contact center run more efficiently and drive a better customer experience. As expected, a competitor tried to enter the deal and in a desperate attempt to win the account, told the customer that they were the Mercedes in the market and that we were the Kia. When asked for a response to their claims, I simply stated that perhaps in the world of traditional cars, they may be a Mercedes. However, I pointed out that they should consider if they would be happy with a nice traditional car or if they would be better served by a much more advanced and technologically innovative machine: the Tesla. It’s true: Teslas are not the flashiest cars and don’t have lots of outward “bling” that some high-end car brands like to tout. However, they are at least 10 years ahead of any other transportation company in designing and delivering next-generation capabilities and features. They have defined innovation in their space and are years ahead of any other car company.
And the same is true with Uniphore and AI. We have spent millions of dollars researching and developing advanced AI and automation capabilities along with voice, speech, natural language, machine learning, voice biometric, and data analytic solutions over the course of nearly 13 years. We have built out an AI and automation platform that, like Tesla, cannot just be replicated and put out in the market. Uniphore did not just start our journey a few years ago like many who are trying to play catch up. It can’t be done.
Innovation comes from Industry Leadership
So how do we maintain this competitive advantage on innovation? That’s simple. We build and grow the world’s best team. Not being one to brag, yet wanting to share some facts, consider the following:
Our world-class teams have hundreds of years of combined global experience on the engineering, implementation, and support side, including PhDs, Masters-level programmers, UX researchers, creative visual designers, data scientists, and expert business and IT consultants, just to name a few. We have people, who in previous lives, worked on notable projects like Apple’s Siri and others who were early pioneers in relevant AI, automation, and machine learning technology.
And while we are indeed an engineering powerhouse, I also know that our functional teams like finance and go-to-market have some of the industry’s best and brightest minds. They understand and regularly connect with our customers, vendors, investors, the media, analysts, and other influencers and are winning. You can have great technology, but if your financial house is not in order, or your people can’t articulate your value proposition and if your customers don’t understand what you can do for them, then engagement stops and so does your customer momentum.
That is certainly not the case for Uniphore. We are adding new customers almost weekly and providing new solutions to existing customers regularly.
We continue to lead by developing, optimizing, communicating, and demonstrating advanced solutions that do things others haven’t even thought of. Earlier this year, we announced three such innovations and continued to focus on innovation with our latest announcement. Our recent funding and growing revenue will ensure we have the resources to continue to incorporate a wide range of new capabilities to our platform including conversational AI and Video AI – coming from our recent acquisition of Emotion Research Lab – and believe me, there’s much more to come.
Because of this leadership position, we can focus on the customer needs and then deliver new capabilities that transform businesses. We have proven our innovations in both proof of concept bake-offs as well as in full production environments of multinational corporations and industry leading enterprises.
Looking Ahead
It’s really an exciting time to be in the Enterprise AI and Automation business. Every digital interaction in the enterprise, whether it’s a phone call with contact center agents, or video calls with our customer, or internal teams, Uniphore’s technology is out to change the world. Even with the challenges of the global pandemic, I am extremely grateful for our teams who have come together to help others and at the same time, continue to deliver some of the best innovations in our industry. And my gratitude extends beyond our team to our customers, partners, analysts, the media, investors and of course, our Board of Directors. I am thankful to have your support and a collective belief in our vision.
And it’s still Day 0. I am really looking forward to another year of innovations and milestones.
Let’s transform business together,
Umesh