Gupshup raises $100 million from Tiger Global; firm’s valuation hits $1.4 billion

Gupshup, a conversational messaging platform for large and small businesses, has raised $100 million from Tiger Global, catapulting it into the Unicorn league of start-ups. Following rapid and profitable growth, the fresh investment by Tiger Global values Gupshup at $1.4 billion.

This funding will be followed by a second close with significant additional funds raised from more investors. The company had previously raised a total of $50 million till 2011 from Charles River Ventures, Helion Venture Partners and Globespan Capital Partners. With this fresh fund raise, it has raised a total of $150 million to date.

Scaling up

Gupshup’s API enables over 100,000 developers and businesses to build messaging and conversational experiences delivering over 6 billion messages per month across 30+ messaging channels. It offers a suite of solutions including messaging APIs, bot platform, bot building tools, scripting engine, omni-channel inbox, conversational AI, client-side software and more.

Gupshup will use this investment to rapidly scale product and go-to-market initiatives worldwide in order to accelerate the transformation of business-to-consumer interactions with conversational experiences delivered over messaging channels. The company has plans to ramp up its headcount from 250 at present to 350 in the next quarter across product, engineering and sales roles.

“Customers expect to converse with businesses the way they do with friends. They expect the conversation to be simple, easy, quick, contextual, and personalised,” explained Beerud Sheth, Gupshup co-founder and CEO. “Gupshup’s mission is to build the tools that help businesses better engage customers through mobile messaging and conversational experiences.”

Geographies

Eighty per cent of its business comes from India followed by Latin America, South East Asia, Africa and Europe. Major brands in India across industries use Gupshup API for customer engagement across multiple channels, especially SMS, Sheth told BusinessLine. “We exited CY2020 with an annual revenue run rate of appromixately $150 million and are projecting a 50 per cent YoY growth in revenue in CY2021” he said.

“The growth in business use of messaging and conversational experiences-- transforming virtually every customer touchpoint-- is an exciting secular trend”, said John Curtius, Partner at Tiger Global Management.