GupShup, a conversational messaging company, secured $100 million in funding from Tiger Global Management, raising the company’s valuation to $1.4 billion. As part of the development, Benzinga chatted with cofounder and CEO Beerud Sheth.
About: Conversational media is the next big thing.
That’s according to Sheth, who prior to co-founding GupShup, built Elance, now known as Upwork Inc (NASDAQ: UPWK), a freelancing platform.
“Decades ago we were preaching remote work,” he said. “Now, we have this vision of conversational messaging.”
Traditional conversations are becoming increasingly populated with visuals. Why? Younger generations are looking to enrich and personalize conversations.
With conversational messaging solutions like GupShup, businesses like Facebook Inc (NASDAQ: FB) and Twitter Inc (NYSE: TWTR) communicate and engage customers, real-time. The company’s API, bot platform and building tools, scripting engines, AI, and more, enables developers to seamlessly build messaging and conversational experiences.
In essence, GupShup transforms boring messages e-commerce or delivery companies may send into rich, interactive visuals.
“You can have two-way conversations between the consumer and business, which then allows them to do customer support, sales, and marketing, and all of that,” Sheth noted. “Chatting with businesses should be as easy as driving with a friend.”
The company has facilitated the exchange of 6 billion messages per month over more than 30 messaging channels.
Recent Events: As part of a larger fundraising initiative, GupShup secured $100 million from Tiger Global Management. The event raised GupShup’s valuation to $1.4 billion.
“Our last funding round was 10 years ago,” Sheth said. “We’ve been profitable for a long time, growing ourselves, and this funding really will accelerate our trajectory.”
GupShup is looking to invest in research and development, as well as rapidly scale product and go-to-market initiatives worldwide. Sheth believes the funding will assist GupShup in accelerating the ongoing transformation of business-to-consumer interactions over messaging channels.
“The bulk of our business is actually in India,” the co-founder noted in a reference to transforming experiences on apps like WeChat. “Our solutions are optimized for mobile-first economies … and we plan to expand globally.”
GupShup, aside from using capital for mergers and acquisitions in adjacent product spaces, is considering a public listing.
Innovation Outlook: Though conversational messaging is a relatively new concept, other brands like Twilio Inc (NYSE: TWLO) are taking a stab at the space.
“We’ve been very early movers in all these new messaging technologies and conversational experiences,” Sheth said. “That’s reflected in the number of new customers we’ve acquired around the world.”
Unlike other platforms, GupShup is looking to refine its product in mobile-first ecosystems like India and scale across the globe, to areas where email and mobile messaging are ripe for disruption.
“Our solutions are more optimized … and our prices and processes are more suited for emerging markets.”
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