Gupshup enters Unicorn club with $100 mn funding

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SME Times News Bureau | 08 Apr, 2021
Adding another unicorn to the Indian growth story, enterprise messaging platform GupShup on Thursday said it has raised $100 million from Tiger Global at a valuation of $1.4 billion.

San Francisco-based Gupshup, which has main operations in India, the US and the UK, joins Indian startups like ShareChat (and Moj), PharmEasy, CRED, Meesho, Digit Insurance, Innovaccer and Infra.Market etc who became unicorn this year.

"Gupshup's mission is to build the tools that help businesses better engage customers through mobile messaging and conversational experiences," said Beerud Sheth, Gupshup Cofounder and CEO.

"As we work towards our mission, we are delighted with this investment from Tiger Global, given its incredible track record of making big, bold, successful bets on innovative, category-defining companies worldwide," Sheth added.

Gupshup's API enables over 100,000 developers and businesses to build messaging and conversational experiences delivering over six billion messages per month across more than 30 messaging channels.

Gupshup said it 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.

"Gupshup is uniquely positioned to win in this market with a differentiated product, a clear and sustainable moat, and an experienced team with a proven track record. In addition to its market leadership, Gupshup's unique combination of scale, growth and profitability attracted us," said John Curtius, Partner at Tiger Global Management.

Gupshup's last funding round was in 2011. It grew rapidly over the last few years, exiting 2020 with annual revenue run rate of approximately $150 million.

"Customers expect to converse with businesses the way they do with friends. They expect the conversation to be simple, easy, quick, contextual, and personalised," Sheth added.