YourNest scores 7X return on its exit from Uniphore

Speech recognition startup Uniphore has delivered a seven-fold exit to one of its early backers, YourNest Venture Capital. Through Uniphore, the early-stage fund has marked its maiden exit and has sold its entire 5% stake in the company.

Confirming the development to Entrackr, Girish Shivani, co-founder of YourNest, said that the fund has received an exit of Rs 55 crore for the Rs 8 crore it infused in the company across several financing rounds. 

Nine-year-old YourNest has been an early investor in Uniphore and had initially invested in 2014 through its Fund-I worth Rs 90 crore. The VC fund then tripled the amount of second investment it infused in Uniphore’s Series A round in 2015. 

Economic Times reported the development first.

The exit has helped YourNest get back 60% of the paid-up capital of its Fund-I in a single shot. Also, the fund’s stake has been picked up by existing investors in the company who had participated in Uniphore’s last funding round in August last year, Shivani added. 

Uniphore had closed its Series C financing round by securing $51 million led by California-based March Capital Partners in August 2019. Other investors who put money in the John Chamber-backed company in its Series C round and have possibly picked up YourNest’s stake are Sistema Asia, CXO Fund, ITP, Chiratae Ventures Iron Pillar and Patni Family.

Shivani declined to comment on who all bought its holding in Uniphore.

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. The company is also planning to raise another round in the next 6-9 months which may be used to provide an exit to its other early investors.

Apart from Uniphore, YourNest’s portfolio companies from Fund-I include Arya.ai, Cove IoT, KaHa, Thrive, SmartQ, Simpli5d, GolfLAN, Aahaa Digiprocure, and Fashalot, among several others. Out of all the portfolio startups, almost 95% are based out of India.

Last month, it also launched a fast-track funding program named ‘SOAR’ for early-stage startups in the post-Covid-19 world. Under the program, the fund is planning to invest between $250,000 and $1 million in select companies.