This startup is taking the mess out of messaging, and turning texts smart

• Gupshup is a smart messaging platform that helps companies reach out to their consumers.
• Its turnover stands upwards of ₹700 crore and is growing at the rate of upwards of 30% year-on-year.
• It is founded by Beerud Sheth, who had co-founded the now US-listed Upworks.

In a world of Internet-led communication run by the likes of WhatsApp and WeChat, a smart messaging platform Gupshup is transforming the humble text message.

From the OTP you receive as a text to the ticket confirmation you get, many tech startups and platforms like Zomato, Oyo etc., use Gupshup to reach out to their consumers.

“The messaging app hasn’t changed over the years, right from the feature phones to the latest smartphones, it’s still just a simple list of plain text messages. That was okay 20 years ago, but now there’s a ton of messages that come in. Though personal messages have shifted to WhatsApp, enterprise messages still find their place in text,” said Beerud Sheth, founder, Gupshup.

Gupshup was the first company that WhatsApp Business tied up with globally as an enterprise messaging partner. Gupshup's turnover stands upwards of ₹700 crore and is growing at the rate of upwards of 30% year-on-year.

For Sheth, this is not his first startup. He is a serial entrepreneur and co-founded Elance (Upwork), the poster boy of the gig economy, that recently went public on Nasdaq as Upwork.

Riding on Artificial Intelligence

The messaging platform has now turned to AI, to clear the clutter in messaging. The AI software looks at enterprise messages and classifies them as banking, real estate, e-commerce or others and then extracts the important information to show you in a simple card.

“It’s like having a personal assistant that goes through your texts and gives you the important information. Gupshup is taking the mess out of messaging,” said Sheth.

It partnered exclusively with OnePlus to launch the AI-powered Smart SMS. Through this it creates buckets for people on the messaging app like OTP, transactional, promotional etc.

Where’s the privacy then?

But when an AI-led software is looking into your texts and extracting information out of it, it evidently raises the question of privacy. It wasn’t something that slipped Sheth’s mind.

“The AI software runs entirely on the device, it does not send any data to the server whether it’s Gupshup’s or OnePlus server. Each device will have its own software,” said Sheth.