MUMBAI: Infosys co-founder Kris Gopalakrishnan has invested an undisclosed amount in Chennai-based speech recognition solutions company Uniphore Software Systems in a Series A round of funding.

Existing investors IDG Ventures India, India Angel Network (IAN), Yournest Fund and Stata Venture Partners also participated in this round of funding.

“Continuing on my theme of backing inclusive innovations, I am optimistic of the success of Uniphore,” Kris Gopalakrishnan said in a statement.

“Man-machine communication is one of the more complex problems to solve. Uniphore’s vision lends possibility of finding a solution to this very difficult problem and the company has already made substantial progress,” he added.

Uniphore had earlier raised USD 1 million in an angel round of funding and was incubated at IIT Madras, where it got a grant of USD 100,000 from National Research Development Corporation in 2008.

“The current fund-raising will fuel Uniphore’s global expansion and product and core technology development plans,” Umesh Sachdev, co-founder and chief executive, Uniphore Software Systems told PTI.

Uniphore’s solutions uses speech as a medium for human-machine interaction and allows any software application to understand and respond to natural human speech.

“This investment is a powerful endorsement of Uniphore’s ability to provide unique and measurable value to our enterprise customers across industries through speech recognition technology. Additionally, these Series-A funds help us attract the best of the talent the industry has to offer,” said Sachdev.

Uniphore’s solutions include voice biometrics, virtual assistant and speech analytics.

After Gopalakrishnan stepped down from the Infosys board last year, he has made select investments including Freshworld, a Bengaluru-based farm-to-fork fruit and vegetable delivery startup, and JetSynthesys, a digital and technology business firm.

He also invested in a Kerala-based business incubator called StartUp Village where he is the chief mentor.

In January last year, he had established Pratiksha Trust along with wife Sudha Gopalakrishnan that is also investing in brain research.

Uniphore’s clients include Mashreq Bank in Dubai and EastWest Bank in Phillippines.