Tata Sky partners with Ubona Technologies to launch voice activated service

Company Brief

Mumbai, November 04, 2008

Tata Sky Ltd., the joint venture from TATA and STAR in partnership with Ubona Technologies, a leading provider of speech recognition solutions for businesses and consumers in India, today announced the launch of yet another unique innovative Interactive Voice Response (IVR) application being used exclusively by Tata Sky at their call centre facilitates to support the huge demand from its subscribers this festive season. The Ubona's system offers a seamless experience and highly reliable speech recognition to subscribers. It is tailored specifically to the Indian context where people speak in multitude of languages, accents and dictions. The system will help the Tata Sky subscriber reduce the unnecessary waiting period while booking for value add-on packages or the popular Showcase movies.

Once the subscriber dials in at the Tata Sky helpline, the subscriber now has an option of the Ubona IVR service which guides him through the process of choosing the required service. Additionally the system provides information on the monthly charges before adding the package and is also equipped to check for balance in the subscriber's account. Alternatively the subscriber also has the option of speaking to the Tata Sky customer care executive directly for additional information. Currently this feature is rolled out in all 3 call centre locations of Tata Sky (Chandigarh, Pune and Hyderabad) and is supported in English language only. Several Indian languages, including Hindi, are proposed to be added shortly.

Mr. Vikram Mehra, Chief Marketing Officer, Tata Sky Ltd. said, "The overwhelming demand for additional packages has flooded our call centre with a vast number of callers and it is our constant endeavour to focus on the service delivery to all our valued subscribers. Thus the introduction of Ubona not just increases the efficiency of service by automating it, but also gives our customer care executives valuable time to service other critical calls. Tata Sky has always presented innovative products and services to its customers and launch of UBONA is like adding another feather to the hat."

Mr Jyotirmoy Chakraborty, Founder & Chief Executive Officer, Ubona Technologies, said, "We created Ubona platform to facilitate handling transactions on phone, using voice as a medium for navigation, which, we think, is extremely appropriate and relevant in the Indian context. The customer care scenario in Tata Sky is an ideal showcase for our platform whereby it at once demonstrates the core capabilities of the platform – be it high volume transactions handling or leveraging speech recognition for speeding transactions."

Tata Sky currently offers 11 unique Interactive Services such as matrimony based classifieds, education services, cooking recipes on-demand, 24x7 darshan on TV and the revolutionary Programming Guide in Hindi.

For further information, please contact:

Hanmer MS&L

Prerna

E-mail: prernajain.hanmerpr@gmail.com

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