Gupshup, another leading global business messaging startup, has recently closed its largest $240 million successfully. The firm has decided against sharing its valuation. The firm began its arc through India’s subcontinent more than two decades back. Four years ago, it famously became a unicorn and has since gone on to such venerable growth. Gupshup has just closed a new round of capital. This follows the company tripling its revenue and increasing its profitability more than 200% since that last funding round in July 2021.
Beerud Seth launched Gupshup in 2004, as a platform for businesses and their customers to communicate via text message. Today, that platform has morphed into a powerhouse – driving more than 120 billion messages a year on behalf of thousands of enterprises. To date, Gupshup has established a leading position in the rapidly growing boom of business messaging. Its tools and templates are used by over 50,000 customers in over 100 countries.
The second round of funding, announced Friday morning, is a mix of both equity and debt. Interestingly, the equity piece specifically is “a little more than half” of the total raised. In 2021, Gupshup hit a valuation of $1.4 billion in its last funding round. It’s little wonder then that it made such an impressive debut, raising $340 million from notable investors, including Tiger Global, Fidelity Management, Think Investments and Malabar Investments.
Despite the successful fundraising, Gupshup has yet to announce its current valuation. The company is in advanced discussions to list publicly on Indian stock exchanges. This likely will come in the next 18 to 24 months.
Beerud Seth said alongside these uncertainties, “We’re consulting all our advisors, lawyers, bankers and accountants. We’re very much in the process of trying to figure out the possible listing.
Gupshup’s accelerated growth trajectory is a testimony to the strong and growing demand for powerful, customized business messaging solutions. As Seth underlines, enterprises don’t have the luxury of just picking shelf-stable foundation models and going to market with those. They require a fair amount of customization, and that’s just where Gupshup comes in and offers loads of support.
This emphasis on customization comes at a time when enterprises more than ever need to be able to plug in AI-driven messaging solutions. Seth noted that there is “a lot of demand coming from enterprises,” emphasizing the necessity for businesses to build AI agents that operate through channels like RCS and WhatsApp. And so, building out these agents, there’s huge demand, great public sector demand, and we need to build to that demand,” he continued.
A lot of Gupshup is based on that premise of being ready for exceptional growth. “We operate ourselves like we are going to be a big company,” Seth remarked, highlighting the company’s ambition and readiness for future challenges.
