This story is from April 1, 2021

Uniphore gets $140m in Series D led by Sorenson Capital Partners

Uniphore gets $140m in Series D led by Sorenson Capital Partners
Chennai: Chennai and California-based Uniphore, an AI-powered conversational service automation company, has raised $140 million in a Series D funding round led by Sorenson Capital Partners.
Serena Capital, Sanabil Investment, and Cisco Investments were the other new investors in the round. Existing investors March Capital Partners, National Grid Partners, Chiratae Ventures, Iron Pillar Fund, and Sistema Capital also participated.
This takes the total funds raised by Uniphore to $210 million and is the company’s largest funding round to date.
The company did not disclose the current valuation but said that the raise makes them poised to emerge as a ‘decacorn’ (a company valued at over $10 billion) in the next few years. Rob Rueckert, managing partner at Sorenson Capital Partners also joins Uniphore’s board with this fundraise. The funds will be used to expand its focus to Europe and Middle East markets, cement its leadership in voice AI technology and also focus on video-based AI applications. Uniphore's focus on AI-powered video analytics follows its recent acquisition of Spain-based Emotion Research Labs, a startup that analyses facial expressions and eye movements to gain insights from video calls. “We saw video emerging as a key touch point for enterprises during the pandemic, and believe that over 70% of organisational tasks will remain on video even after Covid. We are in the process of developing new products that assess video communications that should be ready by next year,” Umesh Sachdev, co-founder and chief executive officer (CEO), Uniphore, said.
As the pandemic forced enterprises to increase their reliance on contact center agents to service customer needs remotely, digital transformation has accelerated in the sector. Uniphore said it has capitalized on this momentum over the past 12 months, recording around 300% growth in 2020, and said it is poised to cross $100 million in contracted annual recurring revenue (ARR) in fiscal year 2022 even without factoring in the new video product.
With call centres seeing 4x more traffic and with agents working from home during Covid, AI and automation emerged as the differentiator for efficiency, Sachdev said.
Uniphore's voice products leverage AI to automate and analyse customer service calls for enterprises. Using the platform, virtual agents take over transactional conversations from humans, support human agents during calls, and predict language, emotion and intent in real-time.

Launched in 2008 and incubated out of IIT-Madras, Uniphore counts former Cisco chairman John Chambers as an investor and mentor.
Uniphore also recorded significant deal wins from global telecom providers, insurance companies and financial service organizations in the last year. They also won contracts with customer experience (CX) providers including Tech Mahindra, NTT DATA, Sitel, Firstsource, and WNS.
The company, which has significant presence in Chennai, Bengaluru, California, and Singapore, also expanded headcount last year with the addition of more than 100 new employees globally, including former PwC partner Stéphane Berthier as CFO. It plans to double its headcount and said it is set to hire more than 300 employees in the coming year.
End of Article
FOLLOW US ON SOCIAL MEDIA