IAN leads round for speech software firm Uniphore

YourNest Angel Fund and angel investor Ray Stata also took part in the round. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Launched in 2008, Uniphore makes software that allows any machine to understand and respond to natural human speech. The company has clients across the banking, financial services, healthcare, agriculture, education and retail sectors.

Profitable since its second year, Uniphore counts IIT Madras' Rural Technology and Business Incubator, Villgro Innovations Foundation, and the National Research Development Corporation among its seed stage investors.

The funding will be used to enlarge Uniphore's global footprint, which includes expanding into Southeast Asia and the Middle East. The company will also look to improve its speech-based products by creating more context-aware, personalized applications. IAN's Nagaraja Prakasam will join the company's board.

According to a release, the global speech analytics market is projected to be worth $1.33 Billion by 2019.

"Continuing on our theme of backing inclusive innovations, we are optimistic of the success of Uniphore, which has already completed six successful years, " said IAN's Prakasam. "In a country of 1.2 billion people where only 250 million people speak English, vernacular speech recognition can enable financial inclusion and information dissemination to farmers."

IAN claims to be India's first angel network with over 250 angel investors. In the last two years IAN claims to have invested around a million dollars a month in almost 30 companies.

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• Topics
• Technology
• Early-stage
• South Asia
• India
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• India Angel Network (IAN)