Uniphore launches its India AI Innovation Hub in Chennai
Uniphore, one of the world's largest AI-native companies incubated at IIT Madras, has inaugurated its India AI Innovation Hub at IIT Madras Research Park in Chennai. The center will focus on areas such as Enterprise Artificial Intelligence (AI), Emotional AI and generative AI across voice, video, textual and tonal data. The aim is to make enterprises more human. According to a release, Uniphore's AI application can be used in a telecom operator's call center. If a customer calls to complain about a variation in their bill amount, the agent usually puts the call on hold, checks the system, and tells the customer that the variation was due to delayed payment. However, the agent also assures the customer that being a loyal customer means the variation will be reversed.
In case of an issue with Uniphore's Co-Pilot application, instead of having to explain their complaint to the agent and wait for a resolution, the AI would have immediately understood the problem, searched the system for the cause, and reversed the amount in question. The agent would have been notified of the resolution, resulting in a conversation that would have taken 8-9 minutes being resolved in less than three minutes using AI. Such a quick resolution would have resulted in a positive experience for the customer and enabled the agent to handle more calls in a day.
In India, the demand for AI comes from across many sectors, including government. People want to lead in AI; he said, "Right from Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the IT Ministry in the Centre and the IT minister in Tamil Nadu, everybody is talking about AI. India is looking to lead the AI, not follow". "Nearly 16 years ago, Uniphore was given a small lab at IIT Madras and the venture was started with a small vision and idea of using AI to connect humans with the Internet. Today, coming back to the city to open the AI Innovation Hub is a major milestone", he added.
Uniphore currently offers its services to more than 1,500 enterprise customers across 20 countries, covering 13 different industries. These enterprises have over 750,000 users in total. Uniphore has a global workforce of around 1,000 employees, with 200 of them located in Chennai and 160 in Bengaluru. In February 2022, Uniphore announced the completion of its Series E funding round, which raised $400 million. This round increased the company's overall funding to over $610 million and resulted in a valuation of $2.5 billion.
