Uniphore Software Systems Teams With Nuance Communications to Expand Speech Recognition and Voice Biometrics for Banks in India

CHENNAI, June 27, 2012 /PRNewswire/ --

Uniphore Partnership Leverages Nuance Customer Service Solutions for Expansion of Financial Services in the Rapidly Growing Indian Market

Nuance Communications, a leading provider of voice and language solutions and Uniphore Software Systems, a fast-growing software company focused on delivering speech-based mobility solutions to businesses, announced a partnership that will expand the use of Nuance Speech Recognition and Voice Biometric Solutions in banking institutions throughout India.

Nuance Voice Biometrics solutions enable a cost-effective and secure way to authenticate customers using their voice as their password. Speech as a medium for authentication is especially important in rural areas of India, where personal computer (PC) ownership and web-based banking is limited, and literacy levels are lower than in other parts of the country.

By leveraging Nuance solutions, Uniphore has developed a mobile voice banking application that identifies customers with voice biometrics, and processes the entire transaction through the use of speech-based navigation. Users can conduct banking and commercial transactions with any mobile phone, including low-cost feature phones, entirely through automated conversation. All transactions occur in real-time, have local language options, and provide customers with account updates using Nuance text-to-speech and outbound text message technologies.

The Uniphore partnership expands Nuance's capabilities in India, which is among the fastest growing economies in the world. Uniphore will ensure rigorous compliance with banking regulations across the country, enabling these institutions to extend their services to diverse segments of the population without investing in cost-intensive infrastructure or hardware. Ultimately the partnership will extend to the development of applications in other verticals, including mHealth and mCommerce.

Sunny Rao, Managing Director, India and South East Asia, Nuance Communications, said, "At Nuance, we believe that the use of voice biometrics in financial service applications provides the most scalable, secure and cost effective means of protecting and serving the interests of rural consumers in India. In combination with Uniphore, we will be able to develop safe, convenient banking applications for this market - to help make true financial inclusion a reality."

Umesh Sachdev, Co-Founder and CEO, Uniphore Software Solutions, said, "Uniphore exists to deliver voice-based applications that promote business outreach across all social, economic, and geographic markets by leveraging the ubiquity of mobile phones in India.  Nuance's Speech Recognition and Voice Biometric Solutions are the best in the industry and with local support resources Nuance is the perfect partner. We are very excited by the possibilities of utilizing Nuance's solutions on behalf of our customers to deliver secure, convenient banking applications to the rural market - taking rural banking and eventually mHealth and mCommerce to a whole new level."

The Uniphore Mobile Voice Banking application is powered by Nuance VocalPassword, an advanced voice biometric solution that verifies a speaker's identity based on voice samples acquired during interactions with voice, web, or mobile apps. The application also leverages Nuance Recognizer, the industry leading Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) engine, to enable speech-based navigation of transactions. Mobile Voice Banking supports 14 languages and dialects common in India, including Indian English, Hindi, Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Oriya, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu, Assamese and Bhojpuri, and Urdu.

About Nuance Communications Inc.

Nuance Communications (NASDAQ: NUAN) is a leading provider of voice and language solutions for businesses and consumers around the world. Its technologies, applications and services make the user experience more compelling by transforming the way people interact with information and how they create, share and use documents. Every day, millions of users and thousands of businesses experience Nuance's proven applications. For more information, please visit www.nuance.com.

About Uniphore Software Systems

Uniphore's mission is to harness the power of voice to transform any ordinary mobile phone into an enterprise-class service delivery platform. Uniphore's solutions connect businesses with customers, partners and employees via multilingual speech recognition and voice biometrics capabilities by elegantly integrating voice and data (GPRS, 3G) technologies to deliver an efficient, cloud-based, enterprise mobility service delivery platform. Uniphore boasts a roster of high-profile, satisfied customers across multiple verticals - financial service providers (mobile commerce & banking), FMCGs & NBFCs (sales force automation), and agriculture, healthcare, & education (content delivery services). For more information, visit us at www.Uniphore.com

Nuance and the Nuance logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Nuance Communications, Inc. or its affiliates in the United States and/or other countries. All other company names or product names may be the trademarks of their respective owners.

Primary Media Contact: Ayonava Bagchi, [email protected], 91-9818774606

Secondary Media Contact: Niraj Sharma, [email protected], 91-9810093472