Messaging platform Gupshup raises $100 million at $1.4 billion valuation – Fundingnewsasia

A startup that started its journey in India 15 years in the past, serving to companies attain and have interaction with customers via texts stated on Thursday it has attained the unicorn standing and can also be worthwhile.

San Francisco-headquartered Gupshup has raised $100 million in its Sequence F financing spherical from Tiger World Administration, which valued the 15-year-old startup at $1.4 billion.

The startup operates a conversational messaging platform, which is utilized by over 100,000 companies and builders at this time to construct their very own messaging and conversational experiences to serve their customers and prospects.

Gupshup, which has raised $150 million to this point and concluded its Sequence E spherical in 2011, says every month its shoppers ship over 6 billion messages.

“The expansion in enterprise use of messaging and conversational experiences, remodeling just about each buyer touchpoint, is an thrilling secular development,” stated John Curtius, a companion at Tiger World Administration, in an announcement. “Gupshup is uniquely positioned to win on this market with a differentiated product, a transparent and sustainable moat, and an skilled group with a confirmed monitor file. Along with its market management, Gupshup’s distinctive mixture of scale, progress and profitability attracted us.”

Tens of tens of millions of customers in India, together with yours actually, bear in mind Gupshup for a distinct purpose, nonetheless. For the primary six years of its existence, Gupshup was finest identified for enabling customers in India to ship group messages to buddies. (These cheap texts and other clever techniques enabled tens of tens of millions of Indians to remain in contact with each other on telephone a decade in the past.)

That mannequin ultimately turned unfeasible to proceed, Beerud Sheth, co-founder and chief government of Gupshup, instructed Fundingnewsasia in an interview.

“For that service to work, Gupshup was subsidizing the messages. We had been paying the price to the cell operators. The concept was that after we scale up, we’ll put commercials in these messages. Lengthy story brief, we thought as the amount of messages will increase, operators will decrease their costs, however they didn’t. And in addition the regulator stated we are able to’t put adverts within the messages,” he recalled.

That’s when Gupshup determined to pivot. “We had been neither capable of subsidize the messages, nor monetize our consumer base. However we had all of this superior know-how for high-performance messaging. So we switched from shopper mannequin to enterprise mannequin. So we began to serve banks, e-commerce corporations, and airways that have to ship high-level messages and may afford to pay for it,” stated Sheth, who additionally co-founder freelance office Elance in 1998.

Over time, Gupshup has expanded to newer messaging channels, together with conversational bots and it additionally helps companies arrange and run their WhatsApp channels to interact with prospects.

Sheth stated scores of main corporations worldwide in banking, e-commerce, journey and hospitality and different sectors are among the many shoppers of Gupshup. These corporations are utilizing Gupshup to ship their prospects with transaction data, and authentication codes amongst different use instances. “These are usually not promoting or promotional messages. These are core service data,” he stated.

The startup, which had an annual run fee of $150 million, will use the recent capital to broaden its product providing and courtroom shoppers in additional markets. Sheth stated an identical use case with companies he noticed in India a decade in the past is taking part in out in lots of rising markets, opening avenue of progress for the enterprise messaging platform.

“Gupshup’s mission is to construct the instruments that assist companies higher interact prospects via cell messaging and conversational experiences. As we work in direction of our mission, we’re delighted with this funding from Tiger World, given its unbelievable monitor file of creating huge, daring, profitable bets on progressive, category-defining firms worldwide,” he stated.