Chennai-based speech recognition startup Uniphore Software Systems Pvt. Ltd has appointed Pat Pattabhiraman as senior vice president of core technologies and former Salesforce India executive Ravi Kompella as its India business head.
“Their vast experience and understanding of the industry will be a huge asset to the company,†Umesh Sachdev, CEO, Uniphore, said in a statement.
According to the Linkedin profiles of the two individuals, Pattabhiraman joined the company in January while Kompella assumed charge in May.
Pattabhiraman is an electrical engineer from IIT Madras and has a PhD in computer science from Simon Fraser University. He has extensive domain experience in natural language processing and speech technology, and has been instrumental in developing critical components of speech recognition engines in 20 languages.
Pattabhiraman is also a mentor at Cyberlaunch, a startup accelerator focused on machine learning and information security startups, and had stints with Conversay and Seagate Software.
An MBA from IIM Calcutta, Kompella had earlier served as the director of enterprise sales at US-based cloud computing company Salesforce’s Indian operations. He had also worked at Oracle and Dell as part of their technology sales and consulting verticals.
Uniphore was started in 2008 by Jaypee University of Information Technology alumni Sachdev and Ravi Saraogi, the founding COO of the company. Earlier, Sachdev had also co-founded Singularis Technologies.
Its product portfolio comprises auMina, a speech analytics platform that mines conversations and helps in achieving better business outcomes, akeira, a virtual assistant that provides consumers a self-service experience through intuitive voice interface, and amVoice, a portable multi-language voice biometrics platform that makes use of the user’s own voice for accurate authentication.
The company works with over 70 enterprise customers and has served over four million end users. In February last year, Uniphore had appointed Sami Benafia as director of sales in the Middle East and Aravind Gaddala as director of product management in Chennai. In December 2015, it had appointed Samith Ramachandran as vice president and head of professional services, and Thamarai Selvi as director of marketing and communications.
With close to 100 employees and offices in India, Singapore and the UAE, Uniphore has raised around $6.6 million from Kris Gopalakrishnan, IDG Ventures India, Indian Angel Network, Yournest Fund and Ray Stata. In October 2016, the company had raised $2 million in a bridge round led by IDG Ventures.
