Mumbai: Venture growth investor Iron Pillar, which backs global companies that build products out of India, has led a $ 5 million funding round in cloud-based artificial intelligence company Ushur.
This is an extension of Ushur’s $ 25 million Series B round in November last year. The Santa Clara, California-based company’s Series B was led by Third Point Ventures, with participation from existing investor 8VC.
Iron Pillar, which has completely deployed its $ 135 million first fund, is looking to raise a sizable second fund from new as well as repeat investors. It raised its first fund with initial commitments of $ 90 million in 2018.
Ushur is Iron Pillar’s second investment from Fund-II, which is expected to announce its first close in a couple of months, said Mohanjit Jolly, co-founder and partner of Iron Pillar.
“The Ushur team has taken process automation to the next level by embedding much needed intelligence in the workflows, with ease of application development and deployment for the business user,†the venture capitalist said.
Aflac Innovation Partners, the corporate venture arm of Aflac group, also participated in the funding round along with Iron Pillar, said Simha Sadasiva, co-founder and CEO of Ushur.
The no-code intelligent automation company, which develops products out of Bengaluru, uses natural-language processing to deliver digital first customer experience solutions for industries like insurance, finance and healthcare.
“The ‘built in India for the world’ funnel is growing with companies such as Ushur using the tremendous horsepower of talent we have back in India to service the global market,†Jolly said. “These companies that incur significant costs in Indian rupee while earning revenues in dollars have shown remarkable growth and we are looking at backing more of such companies being built out of India.â€
In May last year, Iron Pillar raised a further $ 45 million from investors to back specific fund-I portfolio companies. It counts companies such as Uniphore, Servify, FreshToHome, Testbook and NowFloats as part of its eight-firm portfolio.
Iron Pillar was founded by former DFJ India head Jolly, former Morgan Creek director Anand Prasanna and former Citigroup India investment banking head Sameer Nath.
