Gupshup, the Silicon Valley based Conversational messaging firm has recently joined the Unicorn Club in 2021. Currently valued at over $1.4 Billion, Gupshup is the 10th company have joined the Unicorn Club in 2021.
Gupshup – About The Company
Co-founded by IIT- Bombay alumnus Beerud Sheth in 2007, Gupshup is leading the charge of conversational messaging platforms. Gupshup provides the tools, services and assistance required for a company to build a strong foundation of conversational customer interaction. This includes messaging APIs, Bot platforms as well as bot building tools, an omnichannel inbox, scripting engines and a robust conversational experience.
Gupshup powers over 6 Billion messages per month between its thousands of large and small business clients across verticals. Their services are invaluable for marketing, sales and customer support, providing a singular messaging API across a multitude of channels, predominantly text messaging, as well as Social Media like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger.
The Story
Unlike most startups that made it to a billion dollars this year, Gupshup has a long and unique history of pivots as well as coming close to stoppage multiple times. The company started as a consumer-focused group chat service, later pivoting to an instant messaging app and finally shifting to enterprise messaging solutions.
Over its tenure, they have experienced many setbacks, with the company haemorrhaging money during its early days due to the cost of SMS services and other operations. Later, the same issue arose when their income could not keep up with the operating costs.
This was their main reason for pivoting to B2B services and enterprise solutions, and this has proven to be an effective business strategy for the company.
Gupshup – The Growth Curve
Since changing its approach, the company has not only been successful but also profitable. They boast an EBITDA margin of 20%, whereas a lot of companies in their position find this a daunting task for the future. They ended 2021 with a massive annual revenue rate of $150 Million.
This has greatly boosted the credibility of the company, and the morale of the Co-founder and CEO Mr Sheth. According to him, his company is “a cockroach that happened to turn into a unicorn.” After a long time, the company went out to find investors not because they wanted to, but because they had to.
Conclusion
The latest influx of funding only adds to the uniqueness of the company. Their previous round of funding was over a decade ago in 2011 and had raised a sum of $10 Million at the time. Though they had investors before that, this was when they abruptly stopped looking for funding.
In their latest round, they have gained the backing of investment conglomerate Tiger Global. They received $100 Million in funding, skyrocketing their value to $1.4 Billion. The firm wants to scale up its products and go worldwide, focusing on expanding its infrastructure as well as its user base. Their approach to conversational messaging via texts and social media, and their willingness to embrace the most modern technology like AI has made them popular among enterprises as well as a powerful disruptor in the field.
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