John Chambers, executive chairman of Cisco, has picked up 10% stake in Indian speech analytics and virtual assistant firm Uniphore Software Systems.
This is Chambers's first investment in a start-up outside of US. The company has closed the Series B funding round, Uniphore said in a statement.
The company did not disclose the amount of funding it received from Chambers.
Uniphore will utilise new funds to deepen core research driving product enhancement, upgrade its customer service infrastructure, expand its sales reach to newer geographies and recruit new talent to support its rapid growth.
Uniphore's other investors include Kris Gopalakrishnan, IDG Ventures India, Indian Angel Network, YourNest Angel Fund and Ray Stata. It has worked with over 70 enterprises and served over four million end users.
"The company was able to foresee the growing need for deep technology in the area of speech recognition and gas innovated ahead of market to capture this significant opportunity," Chambers said.
Chambers has made the investment in his personal capacity.
Umesh Sachdev, Co-founder and CEO of Uniphore Software Systems, said, "While John's monetary investment is certainly important to the company, it is his vast and varied experience building a globally leading IT company that adds incalculable value to Uniphore and I am certain that the company will gain immensely from his counsel and guidance."
Sachdev said, "Globally, the speech analytics and the virtual assistant verticals are estimated to grow by 2021 to a combined size more than $10 billion. Uniphore has established a clear leadership in both these verticals and we firmly believe that our research led product development strategy sets us up nicely to win a significant share of these growing verticals."
