Breaking the barriers of various languages and dialects across India, Uniphore Software Systems worked its technology grounds up and now supports more than 25 global languages and over 150 dialects. It became a flag bearer of an Indian company which first started solving language problem for Indian villages and is now exporting to other parts of the world. Umesh Sachdev Co-founder and CEO of Uniphore Software Systems shares more.
While studying Computer science at JP Institute of Engineering, Noida, Delhi born Umesh Sachdev met his co-founder Ravi Saraogi. While Ravi belonged to a business family, Umesh was keen to explore the world of entrepreneurship. As a summer project, both of them built a prototype of a software and participated in a technology competition by a French company ending up winning it. They were soon flown to Paris. In the final year, they participated in an Intel business plan competition and made a business plan for the same product. On winning the same, they were flown to San Francisco winning some money as a prize. Interestingly, in both the competitions they were the only Indian companies participating.
Right out of engineering the duo started a company called Singularis Technologies, which was into mobile location based services. As amateur entrepreneurs they understood technology well but lacked business acumen. They spent two years but the idea seemed ahead of its time. Soon they met Prof. Ashok Jhunjhunwala, who chairs the incubation programme at IIT Madras. He was quick to point out the challenges they were facing asking them to join the incubation programme. The two soon moved to Chennai.
“When we decided to move to Chennai we had told ourselves that we will do it for six months. If we do not succeed as entrepreneur, we will take up a job. Uniphore was our last attempt at entrepreneurship,” remembers Sachdev. Joining IIT Chennai incubation programe in 2007 they spent a year in the lab working on the new idea, creating technology and validating it. In 2008 they formed the company Uniphore Software Systems.
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