John Chambers-backed Uniphore closes Series C round at $51 Mn

Speech recognition startup Uniphore has scored $51 million worth Series C round led by California-based venture capital firm March Capital Partners. Sistema Asia, CXO Fund, ITP, Chiratae Ventures Iron Pillar, Patni Family, among others also participated in the round.

This series C round kicked off in July when the Umesh Sachdev-led company raised its first tranche worth $38 million from the investors mentioned above. Now, it has officially closed the round at $51 million.

With the fresh proceeds, Uniphore is looking to expedite its go-to-market in North America and work towards research and development and building speech analytics.

The company claimed to have 300% year-over-year growth in 2018. Further, it aims to achieve $100 million revenue run rate in the next three years.

Founded by Ravi Saraogi and Umesh Sachdev in 2008, Uniphore develops solutions in speech analytics and virtual assistant verticals and has offices in Chennai, Bengaluru, Singapore, and Palo Alto.

In November 2017, Uniphore had picked up undisclosed Series B round led by Chiratae Ventures with participation from John Chambers, chairman of USISPF and executive chairman of Cisco. The Chennai-based entity was also the first investment by John Chambers outside of the United States.

Uniphore counts Haptik and Yellow Messenger, among others, as its major competitors.

BayTalkitech, Hexolabs, Mihup, Voxta, and Liv.Ai that was acquired by Flipkart in August 2018, are some other notable startups in this space.