Gupshup, an Indian AI startup, raises $100 million from Tiger Global to join India’s fast growing club of unicorns

• Gupshup, the artificial intelligence led conversational messaging platform, has become the 10th unicorn from India in 2021.
• It was founded by Beerud Sheth, a serial entrepreneur and co-founded Elance (Upwork), a poster boy of the gig economy.
• Founded in 2004, the startup had last raised funds in 2011.

Ten years after it last raised funds, Gupshup, the artificial intelligence led conversational messaging platform, has become the 10th unicorn from India in 2021. The startup has raised $100 million from Tiger Global and is now valued at $1.4 billion.

Founded in 2004, the startup had last raised funds in 2011. The startup also said that the current investment will be followed by a ‘second close with significant additional funds raised from more investors.’

Gupshup is a smart messaging platform that helps companies reach out to their consumers. It was the first company that WhatsApp Business tied up with globally as an enterprise messaging partner. 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.

Gupshup was founded by Beerud Sheth -- a serial entrepreneur and co-founded Elance – a poster boy of the gig economy. Elance went public on Nasdaq in 2019 as Upwork.

“Customers expect to converse with businesses the way they do with friends. They expect the conversation to be simple, easy, quick, contextual, and personalised. Gupshup’s mission is to build the tools that help businesses better engage customers through mobile messaging and conversational experiences,” said Sheth in a statement.

The company claims that its application programming interface (API) enables over 100,000 developers and businesses to build messaging and conversational experiences ‘delivering over 6 billion messages per month across 30+ messaging channels’. It also claims an annual run rate of $150 million.

“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,” Sheth had told Business Insider in an earlier interview.

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