On November 2, Uniphore, an enterprise-conversational AI firm, announced the opening of its first India AI Innovation Hub at Chennai’s IIT Madras Research Park, where the company was first founded.
“This hub in Chennai is one of our largest offices globally, and it’s unique…Umesh Sachdev, cofounder and CEO of Uniphore, said in an interview with Moneycontrol, “We already do a lot of data science and AI work in Chennai, and going forward some prominent research work in the areas of Gen AI and Emotion AI will continue to happen from this innovation hub.”
Knowledge, emotion, and generative AI are the three areas of artificial intelligence in which Uniphore has made large investments. According to Sachdev, the new hub will help Uniphore’s international operations in the fields of general artificial intelligence (gen AI) and emotion AI engineering.
Designed to accommodate Uniphore’s growing teams in India, this 26,818 square foot space will help the firm continue to achieve worldwide development and innovation in Enterprise AI.
Uniphore plans to expand its personnel in the fields of data science, engineering, artificial intelligence, and research at its recently established innovation hub.”Chennai has demonstrated its exceptional enterprise SaaS talent to India and the global community. These days, artificial intelligence is produced using a slightly different approach and is offered differently. We anticipate that, beginning with Uniphore, Chennai will become India’s center for AI as well as SaaS, according to Sachdev.
Uniphore, which was founded in 2008 by Umesh Sachdev and Ravi Saraog, offers a single integrated platform that analyzes client behavior using video, tonal, and emotional means in order to increase sales, collections, and other metrics.
IIT Madras provided the startup with incubation through both the IIT Madras Research Park and its incubation cell. With its worldwide headquarters located in Palo Alto, California, the corporation maintains operations throughout Europe and the Middle East.
“Uniphore, one of the largest AI-native firms, was created 16 years ago and was initially incubated at IIT Madras, which is located exactly near to our location. Our headquarters are in Palo Alto, which is close to Stanford University. The Silicon Valley that is Uniphore is connected by a genuine scale of Indian invention, according to Sachdev.
Over 1,500 enterprise clients across 20 countries are served by Uniphore, which employs about 1,000 people worldwide, 200 of whom work in its Chennai location.
After obtaining $400 million at a $2.5 billion valuation in 2022, driven by American venture capital firms New Enterprise Associates (NEA), March Capital, Sanabil Investments, and Sorenson Capital Partners, Uniphore joined the Unicorn league.
In March 2021, the company raised an additional $140 million, bringing its total capital raised to $610 million.
After increasing by more than Rs 33.4 crore in FY22, Uniphore’s net profit in FY23 surged by over 4X to Rs 142.7 crore, while its consolidated income from operations was reported at Rs 488 crore.
Sachdev stated, “We are growing at a rate of 70% with 40–50 new customers added every quarter and we have already crossed $100 million in ARR.”
