Planning to join Chennai-based Uniphore Systems at a senior level position? Get ready to be interviewed by one of its key investors John Chambers, former Executive Chairman and CEO of Cisco Systems.
Chambers’ first investment in a start-up outside the US was in Uniphore Systems last November, and he seems to be serious in ensuring that his investee company becomes the next Unicorn.
Any person joining Uniphore in a leadership role will be finally interviewed by Chambers. “Even at Cisco, he may not have done this,” said Umesh Sachdev, co-founder and CEO, Uniphore, which is into speech/voice recognition technology.
Chambers has a 10 per cent stake in Uniphore after participating in a Series B round of fund-raise by the IIT-Madras incubated start-up last November.
As a Chief Guru at Uniphore, Chambers has been mentoring Sachdev and his team in taking the company to the next level, which includes foray into the US. “Every week, Chambers is spending 6-8 hours with us discussing various things,” Sachdev told newspersons on the occasion of the company completing 10 years of its incubation.
“Our first target is to be the next Unicorn with a valuation of $1 billion,” he said. A foray into the US, the world’s largest technology market, will help the company achieve the target. The US foray comes after its success in South-East Asian countries. Chambers will be helping the company in the US foray, he added.
Other investors in Uniphore are Infosys co-founder Kris Goplakrishnan, IDG, IIFL, Indian Angel Network, YourNest Fund and Ray Stata.
Products line-up
Uniphore offers three products based on speech recognition. This includes its flagship offering auMina, which is a speech analytics product, Akeira that provides voice-based virtual assistance, and amVoice, which reduces human error by using voice biometrics.
Uniphore’s speech recognition products can understand over 80 Indian and global languages. More than 70 enterprises globally use these products and solutions to deliver customer experience.
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