Uhura Solutions, a contract intelligence platform based in Podgorica and London has raised €400K in seed funding to accelerate its growth, the startup reported. The funding is led by South Central Ventures, but it was also supported by the existing investors – Barclays and Techstars.
Reportedly the company plans to use the funds to improve its technology and expand its presence in the financial and enterprise sectors.
“We are delighted to have the backing of South Central Ventures, as they have a proven track record in supporting highly successful B2B software businesses. South Central Ventures will be an excellent partner for the next phase in our development,” said Djuro Stojanovic, co-founder and CEO at Uhura.
For the investor, South Central Ventures, this investment is a “step in the right direction”.
“Having a seasoned team working on Uhura is a step in the right direction. With the investment we aim to leapfrog the company into the corporate world and solve the age-old problem of reviewing contracts at a snail’s pace and the errors that go with it,” said Vuk Djukic, Principal at South Central Ventures.
Founded in 2018 by Djuro Stojanovic, Bojan Tesic, Blazo Crvenica and Mladen Markovic, as a graduate of the 2018 Barclays Accelerator powered by TechStars in Tel Aviv, Uhura Solutions is an AI (Artificial Intelligence) platform that reads and understands contracts and agreements just as humans do.
According to company’s data, their software trains its algorithm on a set of data to recognize patterns and extract key clauses, thus allowing clients to manage contracts more effectively. The software is able to read contracts accurately in many formats and provide analytics about the data extracted. Being mostly used in the financial sector, Uhura for the time being, helps financial institutions to speed up review and decision-making processes significantly by using the AI platform that streamlines the process of analyzing and drafting contracts and agreements.
The idea for this cutting edge solution comes from its founders who have worked for years in many international corporations.
“For years, we worked in different international corporations, including banks, and kept saying that the way documents are processed is completely out of touch – not only from the customer’s point of view but also from an internal perspective,” said Stojanovic, adding ”that’s when we decided to do something about it.”
South Central Ventures team agrees with the Uhura’s founder statement. As they put it in their press release, contract review is what takes the most time and diligence in business.
“By automating this very important task, Uhura Solutions ensures that teams, whether big or small, can have a clear understanding of their documents and focus on business knowing their contracts are vetted”, reads the South Central Ventures press release.
With offices in Belgrade, Zagreb and Skopje, South Central Ventures, through Enterprise Innovation Fund (ENIF), is focused on tech companies in the Balkans.
The € 40 million fund is dedicated primarily to early stage and growth investments. Within the fund’s ‘seed pocket’, € 1.5 million is allocated for investments of up to € 100 000 per company. The majority of the fund is allocated for early stage and growth investments of up to € 3 million per company. These investments are intended to fuel the international business expansion and growth of the most promising tech startups that can show traction and prove their potential to “make it big”.