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Conversational commerce unicorn Gupshup has acquired AskSid for an undisclosed amount, in a majorly cash deal.
While the company did not disclose the deal value of this acquisition, Beerud Sheth, Co-founder, and CEO, Gupshup, told BusinessLine that AskSid is an early stage start-up with about 25 employees and a few million in revenues at the time of acquisition. This is the fourth acquisition of Gupshup and the company plans to continue making acquisitions in the future.
Gupshup has turned profitable and is expected to do about $250 million in revenues this year, which is 80 per cent growth over the last year. “We have both growth and profitability along with a high revenue scale. So, we will be looking to list in the US because we have a US-based parent and wholly-owned subsidiaries in many countries, especially India. We intend to be ready for an IPO by end of this year, and the rest depends on the market conditions,” Sheth added.
Huge opportunity
AskSid is a conversational AI provider to e-commerce and retail companies and is said to strengthen Gupshup’s customer experience (CX) offerings. It will help make the entire shopping journey - across pre-purchase, purchase and post-purchase phases - fully conversational.
Headquartered in Bengaluru, AskSid works with global brands like AkzoNobel, Danone, Wolford, Akris and Himalaya Wellness. The tech startup has operations in 25+ countries and supports over 100 languages. “Conversational commerce is about to transform shopping, both online and offline. Gupshup is building the most comprehensive conversational commerce solution and AskSid’s deep-domain AI offering will help us bring even more advanced capabilities to e-commerce and retail businesses worldwide”, said Sheth.
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The acquisition strengthens Gupshup’s customer experience (CX) solutions for BFSI customersPer a recent report by McKinsey, e-commerce could grow up to 5x faster compared to pre-pandemic times. “This presents a huge opportunity for retail and e-commerce brands - but only if they are able to provide expert guidance anytime, anywhere, to their consumers, which is exactly what AskSid delivers”, said Sanjoy Roy, Co-founder and CEO, AskSid.
Strategic fit
AskSid’s angel investors include technology leaders like Rajan Anandan (ex-Google), Krishnakumar Natarajan (ex-Mindtree), Parthasarathy NS (ex-Mindtree) and Radha R (ex-Microsoft and Mindtree). The AI start-up is also backed by Techstars (first institutional investor in AskSid), a global seed accelerator that mentors some of the world’s most successful start-ups.
“AskSid’s retail-specific models help global retail brands deliver impactful shopping experiences to their consumers. I am impressed with AskSid’s powerful AI capabilities and their ability to acquire global brands so readily. The merger with Gupshup is the next logical step and a great strategic fit as their deep vertical AI expertise in retail now gets augmented by Gupshup on a global scale in CPaaS and CX, delivering immense value to enterprise customers,” said Vijay Tirathrai, Managing Director at Techstars.
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