| February 01, 2005 |
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| Voxify Announces $10 Million Financing Round |
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| Portfolio Company: Voxify |
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Outstanding Customer Results and Sales Growth Leads to Oversubscribed
Second Round of Funding
ALAMEDA, Calif., Feb. 1 -- Voxify, the first company to
create Automated Agents(TM) for call centers with the conversational skills
to handle advanced customer service calls, today announced that the company has
raised $10 million in its oversubscribed second round of institutional
funding. The funding was led by Sigma Partners. The company's previous
investors, El Dorado Ventures and Palomar Ventures, also participated in this round.
"Voxify's remarkable customer results and technology testimonials,
accompanied by the quadrupling of their sales in one year, attracted our
attention," said Mark Pine, Managing Director, Sigma Partners. "Call center
organizations today face substantial pressure to improve service and lower
costs. Voxify's new speech technology offers a unique value proposition,
and has proven itself at major corporations including Continental Airlines,
Wyndham International, and World Choice Travel, a part of Travelocity. We
believe Voxify can fundamentally change call center economics and gain the
greatest share of what we see as a multi-billion dollar market opportunity,"
concluded Pine.
"Speech recognition optimizes customer touch-points while reducing costs
for call centers," said Daniel Hong, Voice Business Analyst at Datamonitor.
"Companies like Voxify are providing well-designed speech solutions that
demonstrate measurable success in transforming customer care delivery. Due
to the enterprise push towards improved customer service and cost reduction
spending on speech solutions, North America is expected to grow from
$605 million to $1.2 billion in the next three years."
Powered by the company's patented Conversation Engine(TM), Voxify
Automated Agents model the intelligence and personality of a trained live
agent, allowing them to engage callers in sophisticated dialogue to perform
advanced customer service functions, like reservations, sales, and account
requests.
"Businesses are looking for diverse ways to deliver customer service and
shareholder value, and as a result, companies are turning to Voxify.
Voxify's Automated Agents are built for advanced customer service calls, such as fare
finder, reservations or order status, and can accommodate customers with
varying amounts of information. We believe Voxify is well positioned to
help companies meet their customer service and business challenges. And with the
strong financial backing and business support of Sigma Partners and our
other financial partners, we believe we will continue to achieve rapid growth,"
said Adeeb Shanaa, CEO, Voxify.
Building Success in The Travel and Retail Industries
Voxify has deep experience in the travel industry, serving millions of
calls for some of the industry's largest and most successful airlines and
hotel chains. Among its clients are Continental Airlines, Wyndham
International, World Choice Travel, a part of Travelocity, and Pegasus
Solutions. Voxify is transferring the characteristics that have made it
successful in travel and hospitality to the retail industry. Among these
are the ability to scale up to meet spikes in call volume instantly and the
conversational flexibility to handle everything from package tracking to
orders to service calls with minimal tuning, and with practically zero
capitalinvestment. These attributes, provided through Voxify's patent-pending
Conversation Engine technology, are ideal for retailers struggling to deal
with the sudden spikes in call volume that come from sales, holidays, and
major new product rollouts.
Management Team of Enterprise Software Veterans and MIT Technologists
Voxify was founded by enterprise software veterans and MIT
technologists,Adeeb Shanaa, Amit Desai, and Patrick Nguyen. CEO Shanaa is a seasoned
enterprise software executive with management and technology experience
across several successful technology startups. Shanaa was CEO and founder of
Anubis, a provider of data warehouse software, until its acquisition in 1999.
Desai, VP of Products, brings deep expertise in product strategy, marketing, and
development of enterprise software and applications. Desai was previously
CTO and founder of Anubis. Nguyen, CTO, brings 15 years of experience in
engineering management, software development, and corporate strategy.
Nguyen served as VP of Engineering at Anubis.
About Sigma Partners
Sigma Partners, a high technology venture capital firm with over a
billion dollars under management, helps entrepreneurs transform ideas into
substantial, profitable businesses. Our partners have experience as
successful CEOs, entrepreneurs and technologists. With this deep operating
and technical insight we help build teams and strategies that produce
sustainable value and successful outcomes. We were early investors in
companies such as Cascade, Vignette, StorageNetworks, Internet Security
Systems, and Tradex. CEOs of Sigma portfolio companies speak highly of how
we leverage our network, our experience and our creativity. Our team also
invests meaningful personal funds alongside the main fund, giving a sense of
our active, long-term commitment to our portfolio companies.
About Voxify
Voxify is the first company to create automated call center agents with
the conversational skills to handle advanced customer service calls.
Powered by the company's patented Conversation Engine(TM), Voxify Automated
Agents(TM) model the intelligence and personality of a trained live agent, allowing
them to engage callers in sophisticated dialogue to perform advanced customer
service functions, such as reservations, sales, and account requests.
Voxify Automated Agents are taking calls today for Continental Airlines, Wyndham
International and others, helping them deliver new services, close more
sales, and handle unplanned call volumes without hiring additional staff. Voxify
was founded by MIT technologists and enterprise software veterans.
Headquartered in Alameda, California, the company has a growing list of skilled partners
around the globe. |
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