Uniphore’s $400M funding called largest ever in call center market

Uniphore Technologies Inc. said it closed the largest funding round ever for a company in the call center business: a $400 million late-stage investment that values the company at $2.5 billion.

The Series E round, which brings Uniphore’s total funding to $610 million, dramatizes investors’ appetite for technology that makes call center agents more efficient and improves customer service. A recent survey by IMImobile Ltd. Mobile found that three-quarters of consumers say they will do more business with a company that resolves their issues promptly.

Uniphore said it will use the funds to improve its product in the area of voice response, computer vision and tonal emotion, as well as to expand its operations in North America, Europe and Asia/Pacific.

The company has four main products. U-Self Serve is an intelligent virtual assistant that can engage customers in conversations in multiple languages, gauge intent and sentiment and hand calls off to the live agents best equipped to respond. U-Assist listens to and transcribes all telephone interactions and stores the data in a searchable archive. It applies natural language processing to determine the topic and sentiment of a customer call to give agents suggestions on how to respond.

U-Trust authenticates and monitors agents using voice biometrics. U-Analyze combs through written and voice conversations to discover intent and sentiment. It can be used for agent quality evaluation, training, compliance and customer and analysis.

Founded in 2008 in Chennai, India, Uniphore attracted attention and investment from former Cisco Systems Inc. CEO John Chambers, who acquired a 10% stake in 2017 and guided the firm’s opening of its U.S. offices in 2019, according to a Forbes profile. Co-founder Umesh Sachdev said the company is on track to achieve $100 million in annual recurring revenue this year. Most revenue comes from large contracts with about 100 enterprises, including Allstate Insurance Co., Accenture plc, DHL Express Inc. and DirecTV LLC.

Its market has been red-hot of late. Microsoft Corp. acquired voice transcription firm Nuance Communiations Inc. last April for nearly $19.7 billion and Zoom Video Communications Inc. attempted to buy call center automation firm Five9 Inc. last fall, although the deal fell through.

The funding round was led by New Enterprise Associates with participation from undisclosed existing and new investors.

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