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<ul><li><keyword id="755674" type="COMPANY" weightage="20" keywordseo="GupShup">Gupshup</keyword> is a smart messaging platform that helps companies reach out to their consumers. </li><li>Its turnover stands upwards of ₹700 crore and is growing at the rate of upwards of 30% year-on-year. </li><li>It is founded by <keyword id="272913" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Beerud-Sheth">Beerud Sheth</keyword>, who had co-founded the now US-listed Upworks.</li></ul>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 <keyword id="4936066" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="whatsapp-business">WhatsApp Business</keyword> 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 <keyword id="107950" type="TECHNOLOGY" weightage="20" keywordseo="artificial-intelligence">Artificial Intelligence</keyword> 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 <keyword id="6742428" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="Smart-SMS">Smart SMS</keyword>. 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.

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

<keyword id="20594409" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="gupshup" source="keywords">Gupshup</keyword>, the conversational engagement pioneer, today announced the launch of <keyword id="20832751" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="conversation-cloud" source="keywords">Conversation Cloud</keyword>, a comprehensive suite of SaaS tools that are set to revolutionize business-to-customer interactions. AI-powered conversations represent the next major paradigm shift in user interfaces after web and app, and the Conversation Cloud provides businesses with the essential tools for customer engagement in this new era. Gupshup enables businesses to drive customer acquisition, engagement, commerce, and support, on conversational channels such as WhatsApp, RCS, Instagram, Voice, etc, helping them achieve substantial ROI increase (6-10X). The Conversation Cloud consists of three key modules, Converse, Advertise, and Communicate, that enable conversational relationship management across the full customer lifecycle. <keyword id="20832754" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="gupshup-converse" source="keywords">Gupshup Converse</keyword> helps businesses build rich two-way conversational journeys across the customer lifecycle. Business users can leverage advanced no-code tools to configure customer journeys, bot flows, and auto-trigger contextual messages. Interactions across the customer funnel leverage Gupshup Customer360's unified profiles based on customer attributes and real-time conversational events. Marketers can create granular segments and engage customers better with personalized experiences. The Converse product comes packed with conversational commerce modules such as catalogs, payment integrations, and agent-assist to enable automated or human-assisted commerce. Converse also includes ACE LLM, Gupshup's domain-specific large language model to build AI bots that can handle all kinds of natural language queries while operating within safety guardrails appropriate for a business conversation. "For our 2023 Switch-off campaign, we leveraged WhatsApp in partnership with Gupshup to amplify the message and engage people through a conversational survey. The results have been quite encouraging, helping us not only connect one-on-one with customers but also gain valuable insights. Gupshup has been a great partner and enabler for us to tap into the power of conversational messaging through this innovative campaign. We wish them good luck on the launch of their Conversation Cloud", said <keyword id="20832753" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="mayank-prabhakar" source="keywords">Mayank Prabhakar</keyword>, Head of Digital Marketing at smartphone maker Vivo's India office. Gupshup Advertise enables marketers to acquire, qualify, and convert customers by leveraging Click to WhatsApp and Click to Instagram Ads. This significantly enhances new customer acquisition, and campaign ROI while empowering brands to build their first-party database. Brands leveraging Advertise have seen 60-70% lower cost per qualified lead and 1.6X sign-ups compared to traditional channels. <keyword id="20832755" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="gupshup-communicate" source="keywords">Gupshup Communicate</keyword> is a significant step up from traditional CPaaS, and has smart capabilities such as Gen-AI powered automatic message translation, optimized scheduling to maximize open rates, and omnichannel message failover, in addition to its pre-existing capability to send messages across 30+ channels. "The Conversational Internet is among the biggest trends shaking up the customer experience. It is rapidly digitizing the mobile-first countries in emerging markets. Every business and brand will need new tools to build and manage conversational experiences. Gupshup builds on its reputation for innovation by launching the first such comprehensive platform, the Conversation Cloud, that transforms customer experiences and delivers substantial ROI to businesses", said Beerud Sheth, Co-founder and CEO of Gupshup. "Messaging continues to emerge as a leading channel for brands to authentically connect with customers, far and wide. We are excited to see partners like Gupshup further enhancing the tools and solutions that will help brands drive even more value in customer interactions", said <keyword id="20832752" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="ravi-garg" source="keywords">Ravi Garg</keyword>, Director, Business Messaging, Meta India. To know more about our Conversation Cloud and why brands should leverage the Conversational Internet, watch this video. Chat with Guppy, our new Gen AI-powered virtual assistant - Ask him anything about Conversation Cloud and witness Guppy in action! SEE ALSO: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/business/auto/news/passenger-vehicles-record-11-3-growth-in-february-2024-two-wheelers-record-35-growth/articleshow/108204817.cms">Passenger vehicles record 11.3% growth in February 2024, two-wheelers record 35% growth</a> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/business/telecom/news/reliance-jio-and-airtel-add-subscribers-as-vis-subscriber-base-continues-to-decline/articleshow/107934565.cms">Reliance Jio and Airtel add subscribers as Vi’s subscriber base continues to decline</a> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/tech/news/from-usernames-to-secret-codes-for-locked-chats-here-are-the-upcoming-whatsapp-features/articleshow/107885651.cms">From usernames to secret codes for locked chats, here are the upcoming WhatsApp features</a>

Gupshup launches Conversation Cloud, AI-powered tool for businesses

<ul><li>Rapid <keyword id="11964795" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="digitisation" source="Orion">digitisation</keyword> has created an opportunity for software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies to scale like never before. </li><li>Business Insider India’s special web series <keyword id="15419506" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="saas-scions" source="Orion">SAAS Scions</keyword> in partnership with AWS saw Beerud Sheth, co-founder and CEO of Gupshup, in conversation with Tim Barnes (GM, Advertising and Marketing Technology Vertical), Amazon Web Services, on the digitisation journey in <keyword id="6359891" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="emerging-markets" source="Orion">emerging markets</keyword>, protection of user privacy, and more. </li><li>According to Sheth, for markets like India, the time is now.</li></ul>The next two decades could see the greatest amount of digitisation and “maybe even wealth creation,” according to Beerud Sheth, co-founder and chief executive officer of unicorn conversational messaging startup Gupshup. Sheth was speaking with Tim Barnes, General Manager, Advertising and Marketing Technology Vertical, Amazon Web Services, at the SAAS Scions web series by Business Insider India. “(It’s) the kind of growth you saw in China for the last two decades, and in the US maybe the two decades before that. The baseline for digitisation was low (in emerging countries), and there was an enormous need to e-enable every aspect of the business (during the pandemic). That’s just for companies focused on the Indian market. For companies focused on the global market, of course, India has enormous cost advantages, scale and so on,” Sheth said. Sheth noted the remarkable differences in the digitisation journey adopted by India (and other emerging markets) as compared to developed economies. “Some of it is obvious, the moment people couldn’t get into physical spaces, clearly all of it moved online,” he said. “Everything from online banking to commerce, to online education, and even some business use-cases. All of that then requires a lot more notifications, updates, interactions, and more. All of that created a huge spike in demand.” The digital play in emerging markets A large part of Gupshup’s business comes from emerging markets, where, unlike the western markets, the pandemic-driven spike in digitization didn’t subside once things started returning to normal. For Sheth, the transition to digital in emerging economies was a metamorphosis that saw no coming back. “There’s a slightly different impact on the emerging markets because of a variety of reasons,” he said. “There were a lot of local businesses, which before the pandemic (would say) I don’t need to do this or we’ll do it later. But this really was a shock to the system, and it really accelerated the adoption of digital tech and so on. And that is not a temporary spike, you digitise and then you’re digital forever,” he added. According to Sheth, for markets like India, the time is now. Rapid digitisation has created an opportunity for software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies to scale like never before. “Conversational messaging supports customers across the entire lifecycle, which includes the front end in the marketing side, in the middle around the commerce or purchasing side, and then in the post-purchase around support. Specifically, around martech, there’s a commensurate growth in use-cases, like people using it for lead generation, promotions, deals, offers and so on. So we’ve seen a massive growth spurt.” said Sheth. And this growth isn’t just with large enterprises, but significantly at the “lower end of the pyramid.” A restaurant or corner store didn’t have the same amount of time to digitise before the pandemic, but when customers stopped walking into the store, “what was once a nice to have, became a must-have.” Protecting user privacy However, he warned that SaaS firms must take company user privacy seriously while building their products. If privacy is an afterthought, Sheth reasons that it could disqualify firms from operating in certain jurisdictions since different countries have different requirements for compliance and user privacy. “We try to create federated solutions, which means it can be hosted in separate instances without needing to work with a centralised assistant. Which gives us the flexibility where different instances can support different privacy frameworks,” he advised. Establishing the new de-facto Beerud Sheth’s comparison of new-age chatbots to early internet-era websites demonstrates the potential for conversational messaging for businesses of all sizes. The company’s innovation, keeping in step with emerging cloud technologies and fine-tuned to various geographies, has unlocked a newer medium of communication which have radically transformed the very core of how businesses interact with their customers. If the old catchphrase,”The medium is the message” were to be recalled, then Gupshup is both the medium, and a strong message for every business that has a customer. Disclaimer: This article is generated and published by the Insider Studios team. You can get in touch with them on <a target="_blank" class="c-link" href="mailto:insiderstudios@businessinsider.in">insiderstudios@businessinsider.in</a>

Emerging markets’ digitisation roadmap different from West: Gupshup CEO

<cmsannotation type="cmsannotation" annotationid="summary" comment="summary" text="As the onset of the new year beckons us towards new beginnings, Business Insider India invites you to experience our innovations — a showcase of new editorial initiatives, products and brand partnerships from 2022 which have helped leading global companies engage with our select audience. These activities have established the foundation for our unique editorial mission around sustainability, personal finance, and enterprise tech which delivered sharp, incisive and compelling content to our readers. This year, we look forward to collaborating with you on your brand journey and help you emulate the same success that our longstanding partners have achieved.">As the onset of the new year beckons us towards new beginnings, Business Insider India invites you to experience our innovations — a showcase of new editorial initiatives, products and brand partnerships from 2022 which have helped leading global companies engage with our select audience. These activities have established the foundation for our unique editorial mission around sustainability, personal finance, and enterprise tech which delivered sharp, incisive and compelling content to our readers. This year, we look forward to collaborating with you on your brand journey and help you emulate the same success that our longstanding partners have achieved.</cmsannotation> <cmsannotation type="cmsannotation" annotationid="summary" comment="summary" text="Dive in to discover our success stories and drop us a line to harness the very best of Business Insider India’s creative approaches.">Dive in to discover our success stories and drop us a line to harness the very best of Business Insider India’s creative approaches.</cmsannotation> <bulletContentEmbed name="Sustainability Insider" columns="1"><bulletContentHeading name="Sustainability Insider_head"> <div type="image" title="Sustainability Insider" msid="97128329" hostid="261" caption="&amp;lt;p&amp;gt;Sustainability Insider&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;"></div></columnHeadThumb><keyword id="14107500" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="Sustainability-Insider" source="Orion">Sustainability Insider</keyword></columnHeadTitle></columnHead></bulletContentHeading><bulleteContentBody name="Sustainability Insider_body"><bulletContentRow name="Sustainability Insider_1673794911834810"><bulletContentRowHeading><bulletContentRowHead col="1"></bulletContentRowHead></bulletContentRowHeading><bulletContentRowBody><bulletContentRowCell col="1">2023 and beyond… Environment, Social and Governance (ESG) will take the centre stage. Our ESG focussed programming segment - Sustainability Insider sharpens the focus on people, companies and ideas which are making this world a better place. Sustainability Insider’s marquee event, the <keyword id="9906589" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="World-EV-Day" source="Orion">World EV Day</keyword> webinar in September showcased industry veterans and thought leaders through and engaged large audiences across the website and social channels. Read more <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/sustainability">here</a></bulletContentRowCell></bulletContentRowBody></bulletContentRow></bulleteContentBody><payload><![CDATA[right]]></payload></bulletContentEmbed> <bulletContentEmbed name="left_image" columns="1"><bulletContentHeading name="left_image_head"> <div type="image" title="EV_IG (1)" msid="96686566" hostid="261"></div></columnHeadThumb>SUPERCHARGING WORLD EV DAY</columnHeadTitle></columnHead></bulletContentHeading><bulleteContentBody name="left_image_body"><bulletContentRow name="left_image_8476256729899678"><bulletContentRowHeading><bulletContentRowHead col="1"></bulletContentRowHead></bulletContentRowHeading><bulletContentRowBody><bulletContentRowCell col="1">Business Insider India September 2022 curated a special episode on the World EV Day. The Virtual panel, shifting Gears; Evaluating the Road to Sustainability featured Dr. Raji Mathi, Director, Automative Research Association of India (ARAI); Anmol Jaggi, CEO, BluSmart Mobility; Suhas Rajkumar, Founder and CEO, Simple Energy; and Anshul Khandelwal, Chief Marketing &amp; Revenue Officer, Ola Group. The group highlighted the challenges and opportunities of fast-tracking EV adoption in India. Watch the feature <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/sustainability/article/sustainability-forum-shifting-gears-evaluating-the-road-to-sustainable-mobility/articleshow/94248881.cms">here</a></bulletContentRowCell></bulletContentRowBody></bulletContentRow></bulleteContentBody><payload><![CDATA[left]]></payload></bulletContentEmbed> <bulletContentEmbed name="left_image" columns="1"><bulletContentHeading name="left_image_head"><div type="image" title="Quiz Image" msid="96687183" hostid="261"></div></columnHeadThumb>PRODUCT INNOVATION INTERACTIVE QUIZ</columnHeadTitle></columnHead></bulletContentHeading><bulleteContentBody name="left_image_body"><bulletContentRow name="left_image_2671779128491774"><bulletContentRowHeading><bulletContentRowHead col="1"></bulletContentRowHead></bulletContentRowHeading><bulletContentRowBody><bulletContentRowCell col="1">Interactivity came to the fore as Business as Business Insider India launched the interactive quiz, drawing audiences to engage with the platform and test their acumen on all things sustainability. you can also participate in the quiz and see how you stack up when it comes to sustainability. Click <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/sustainability/news/lok-sabha-approves-energy-conservation-bill-to-accelerate-climate-action-opens-multi-billion-dollar-carbon-market/articleshow/93479684.cms">here</a> to take the quiz</bulletContentRowCell></bulletContentRowBody></bulletContentRow></bulleteContentBody><payload><![CDATA[left]]></payload></bulletContentEmbed> <bulletContentEmbed name="right_image" columns="1"><bulletContentHeading name="right_image_head"> <div type="image" title="saasscions_roundup" msid="96702847" hostid="261"></div></columnHeadThumb>MARQUEE BRAND INNOVATION VIA INSIDER STODIOS-</columnHeadTitle></columnHead></bulletContentHeading><bulleteContentBody name="right_image_body"><bulletContentRow name="right_image_6519875174873057"><bulletContentRowHeading><bulletContentRowHead col="1">SAAS SCIONS FOR AWS</bulletContentRowHead></bulletContentRowHeading><bulletContentRowBody><bulletContentRowCell col="1">Business Insider India partnered with AWS to custom create SaaS Scions, a content IP six-part series featuring visionaries in the SaaS space who have catalysed the SaaS domain globally. The series features the country's best known SaaS founders in conversation with AWS' leaders and shines a spotlight on India's growth story while capturing the thinking and vision of India's SaaS scions. Featured guests include Girish Mathrubootham, Jay Vijayan, Sandeep Gupta and Beerud Sheth.</bulletContentRowCell></bulletContentRowBody></bulletContentRow></bulleteContentBody><payload><![CDATA[right]]></payload></bulletContentEmbed> <bulletContentEmbed name="Money Insider | Season 2 | COMING SOON on Business Insider" columns="1"><bulletContentHeading name="Money Insider | Season 2 | COMING SOON on Business Insider_head"> <div type="image" title="Money Insider" msid="97127935" hostid="261" caption="&amp;lt;p&amp;gt;&amp;lt;sup&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/sup&amp;gt;Money Insider&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;"></div></columnHeadThumb>Money Insider | Season 2 | COMING SOON on Business Insider</columnHeadTitle></columnHead></bulletContentHeading><bulleteContentBody name="Money Insider | Season 2 | COMING SOON on Business Insider_body"><bulletContentRow name="Money Insider | Season 2 | COMING SOON on Business Insider_8003104820832338"><bulletContentRowHeading><bulletContentRowHead col="1"></bulletContentRowHead></bulletContentRowHeading><bulletContentRowBody><bulletContentRowCell col="1">The best of financial insights from the country’s most creative voices! Business Insider India’s Money Insider brings together the country’s leading ‘Fin-fluencers’ who are heralding a new beginning in the world of financial literacy. Catch insights, bust myths, share a chuckle as you learn more about investing, insurance, home-buying, credit cards, planning taxes and all things personal finance.</bulletContentRowCell></bulletContentRowBody></bulletContentRow></bulleteContentBody><payload><![CDATA[left]]></payload></bulletContentEmbed> <bulletContentEmbed name="Decoding Season 1’s performance success" columns="1"><bulletContentHeading name="Decoding Season 1’s performance success_head"> <div type="image" title="Decoding Season 1’s performance success" msid="97128114" hostid="261" caption="&amp;lt;p&amp;gt;Decoding Season 1&amp;#8217;s performance success&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;"></div></columnHeadThumb>Decoding Season 1’s performance success</columnHeadTitle></columnHead></bulletContentHeading><bulleteContentBody name="Decoding Season 1’s performance success_body"><bulletContentRow name="Decoding Season 1’s performance success_0072309969741672"><bulletContentRowHeading><bulletContentRowHead col="1"></bulletContentRowHead></bulletContentRowHeading><bulletContentRowBody><bulletContentRowCell col="1">Money Insider tapped right into the current trend of financial literacy among Millennials and GenZ. 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<ul><li>Tiger Global, Think Investments and Malabar Investments participated in the round.</li><li>The company will be exploring mergers and acquisitions to expand its business.</li><li>A part of the funding will also be used to buyback shares from the company's employees.</li></ul>Messaging platform <keyword id="755674" type="COMPANY" weightage="20" keywordseo="GupShup">Gupshup</keyword>, which became a unicorn earlier in April 2021, has raised an additional funding of $240 million in a follow-on funding round. Several marquee investors like Fidelity Management and Research Company LLC, Tiger Global, Think Investments, Malabar Investments, Harbor Spring Capital participated in the round, along with certain accounts managed by Neuberger Berman Investment Advisers LLC, White Oak, and others. A unicorn is a startup valued at or more than $1 billion. The 17-year-old company will use this funding to invest in its product and also enable buyback shares from existing and former employees. The company will also be providing partial exits to few of its initial investors. Gupshup is also exploring merger and acquisition (M&amp;A) opportunities to expand its business, it announced in the press release. “We have followed Gupshup’s progress for a long while and believe that they are the most evolved customer communications platform In India and increasingly in other emerging markets, with a leadership position in the most attractive and fastest growing sub-segments of the market,” said Sumeet Nagar, managing director of Malabar Investments. Gupshup was founded by Beerud Sheth in 2004. It is a conversational messaging platform that enables businesses to manage internal communications. The company provides a platform for developers to build bots for SMS, Twitter, Slack, WeChat, Teamchat and others. The company’s clientele is spread across banking, ecommerce, hospitality, consumer goods and other industries. A few big names in its client list are Zomato, Flipkart, HDFC Bank, and others. SEE ALSO <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/business/startups/news/the-whole-truth-a-healthy-packaged-food-brand-raises-6-million-from-sequoia-capital/articleshow/84815594.cms">The Whole Truth, a ‘healthy’ packaged food brand, raises $6 million to enter new categories </a> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/stock-market/news/rolex-rings-ipo-opens-on-july-28-and-closes-on-july-30-with-a-price-band-of-880-900/articleshow/84813639.cms">Rolex Rings IPO opens today with a price band of ₹880-900</a>

Business communication platform Gupshup raises $240 million, to buyback ESOPs

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Gupshup is an AI startup that helps businesses quickly sort through and organize text messages, and transform them into easy-to-understand visual cards. </li><li>"It reads every message, extracts the key information and then displays it as a rich visualized card," co-founder and CEO Beerud Sheth told Business Insider.</li><li>Gupshup says its "smart messaging" platform, which is used by such companies as Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and Citibank, handles 4.5 million messages a month.</li><li>The startup is profitable, generating up to $100 million in revenue a year, it says. Here's the pitch deck it used to raise $50 million from investors, including CRV, Globespan Capital Partners and Helion Ventures.</li><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/prime?module=article&amp;area=summary">Click here for more BI Prime stories.</a></li></ul>Text messages are now an important part of running a business. But sorting through massive numbers of messages from customers, partners and even employees can be tedious and time-consuming.That's the problem entrepreneur Beerud Sheth, co-founder and CEO of Gupshup, has taken on by using AI to quickly manage all that traffic, and to even make text messages a more valuable business tool."More and more enterprises are sending messages because they find it's so convenient," Sheth told Business Insider. "The more they come in the harder it is to manage them."<a href="https://www.gupshup.io/developer/home">Gupshup</a>, a Hindi word for "socializing" or "chatting," uses AI to automatically sort and classify text messages on any device, organizing them into folders similar to the system used by Google's Gmail. The tool then transforms each message into a more compelling and easy-to-understand visual card. Sheth calls it smart messaging."It reads every message, extracts the key information and then displays it as a rich visualized card," Sheth, who was also the founder of Elance, the freelance platform now known as Upwork, told Business Insider. "It looks like a boarding pass of a plane ticket or a credit card statement rather than a plain text message."Gupshup, which was founded in 2005 and is based in Palo Alto, is used by major companies, including Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, Citibank and LinkedIn. The company says its platform handles 4.5 billion messages a month.Gupshup has raised $50 million in five rounds from investors, including CRV, Globespan Capital Partners and Helion Ventures. Its last funding round was in 2011 when it raised $10 million. Sheth says the startup has been profitable since then, generating up to $100 million in revenue a year.Here's the pitch deck Gupshup used to raise its most recent funding round in 2011:

Here's the pitch deck AI startup Gupshup used to raise $50 million to help businesses send better, more fun text messages to customers

<a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/whats-next-ceos-tell-insider-how-they-are-approaching-the-return-to-the-office-2021-04"></a><div type="image" title="Copy of Hayden Brown_ President and CEO (1)" height="2503" width="3338" msid="83557051" hostid="261"></div><ul class="summary-list"><li><keyword id="3647736" type="PERSON" weightage="100" keywordseo="Upwork">Upwork</keyword> is a platform connecting companies with freelancers to transform businesses.</li><li>Hayden Brown, president and CEO, shared how she navigated the company through the pandemic.</li><li>Brown also detailed Upwork's plans to support the next generation of <keyword id="278613" type="COMPANY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Freelance">freelance</keyword> and contract workers.</li></ul>At <a href="https://www.upwork.com/">Upwork</a>, working from home is not a new phenomenon.The freelancer platform calls itself the "world's work marketplace," helping bridge companies and freelancers together. The practice of working from anywhere has been the company culture since its founding in 1998 when it was "Elance." And founders, Beerud Sheth and Srinivas Anumolu were working out of an apartment in Jersey City, New Jersey. The company became Upwork in 2015.<a href="https://www.upwork.com/documents/2020-annual-impact-report">Upwork</a> has 539 corporate employees, 1,372 freelancer or contract workers, with workers in over 800 cities. The company's revenue for 2020 was $373 million and freelancers with profiles on the platform earned $2.3 billion in 2020.Pre-pandemic, most freelancers worked remotely, while employees in their physical offices had "Work from Home Wednesdays" available.Hayden Brown became president and CEO in January 2020 after holding positions of senior vice president of product and design and chief marketing and product officer. Three months into her new leadership role, COVID-19 closed offices, but she saw it as an "opportunity.""It was really a moment to say, we're going to leverage the strengths we have as a team that knows how to work remotely and do that really well," she said. "And lean into my brand as the new CEO around communication, clarity, transparency, and amplify all of that at once and make sure everyone is hearing from me and our leadership team."In keeping with her commitment to communication and transparency, Brown, along with her leadership team, did weekly video calls to keep staff well-informed."As much as hindsight is 20/20, I don't have something I wish we had done differently," she said. "There were so many beautiful things that we were able to put together really quickly to help in the moment of crisis. So I'm not saying we did everything perfectly, but given what was happening, it's hard to really go back and think, what could we have done [differently]?"<h2>Avoiding <keyword id="84644" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="60" keywordseo="burnout">burnout</keyword> with freelancers and 'synchronized time off'</h2>The switch to <keyword id="1591611" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="remote-work">remote work</keyword> made workers more accessible to each other leading to a major rise in reports of burnout. <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/meetings-during-pandemic-spiraled-out-of-control-2021-3">Insider reported</a> that compared to February 2020, workers are spending 2.5 times the minutes per week in meetings, sent 45% more chats per week to coworkers, and sent 42% more work chats outside regular business hours.But Brown feels they've been able to avoid burnout using their "secret sauce" of utilizing freelancers to manage workloads.Teams have a $500 freelance budget they can use on talent on their own platform to get stuff done and offload work. "We actually deliver that to our customers through freelancers and our platform, and we did that ourselves," Brown said.The other tactic Brown used is "synchronized time-off," when the entire company (apart from customer support and similar functions) shut down. Over the 2021 Memorial Day weekend, Upwork employees had two extra days off.The idea is when people come back "they're not individually taking personal time off, but then their team was all working and they come back to this overflowed inbox," she said.Brown and her teams are also using tools, like Slack, Zoom, and Google Workspace, to improve communication and remove business divisions among teams.<h2>Supporting young people as they join the work marketplace</h2>Although Brown has never freelanced herself, she believes in the power it has to change people's feelings about work and the economy. <a href="https://www.upwork.com/press/releases/new-upwork-study-finds-36-of-the-us-workforce-freelance-amid-the-covid-19-pandemic">Upwork conducted a study of the independent workforce in America</a> and found 59 million Americans performed freelance work in 2020, an increase of 2 million freelancers since 2019.Another key finding was the wave of Gen-Zers ages 18-22 who entered the job market. Over 36% of them started freelancing since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, making them about half of the freelance workforce."The younger generations have seen that employment, the traditional employment contract, isn't what it was in the past," Brown said. "They want the autonomy to build their careers when, where, and how they can on their terms."Upwork plans to help the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/upwork-pandemic-gig-economy-white-collar-high-skilled-summer-freelancers2020-9">next generation</a> by keeping the platform free and accessible while continuing to work with educational partners."People think freelancing is maybe not a serious career choice, and something they may not be able to do sustainably, which is not true," Brown said. "We're very focused on trying to pull the covers off of what's really happening with the freelance economy, educate more businesses about the power and potential of [freelancing], and what they can do with the amazing skilled workers that are available through the platform.

CEO of freelance platform Upwork shares how she's helping the next generation build a freelance career and avoid burnout

<keyword id="755674" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="GupShup">Gupshup</keyword> brings the <keyword id="174913" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="100" keywordseo="BOT">bot</keyword> revolution to India with the launch of its bot building platform <a href="http://gupshup.io">gupshup.io</a> consisting of omni-channel messaging APIs and bot builder tools. That means now anyone and everyone can build a bot. And you thought you have to be an ivy-league alumni to build a bot! 
 
These bots will enable shopping, ordering food, banking, trading and almost everything one doe through messaging apps. One can chat with a bot and order anything from books of your choice to a pizza with your choice of toppings. 
 
“Bots are the new apps. Bots will transform virtually every aspect of our lives, making ti simpler and easier to engage with businesses and brands just by chatting with them,” said Beerud Sheth, founder and CEO of Gupshup. 
 
Gupshup offers tools for the entire bot lifecycle. One can build, test and deploy a bot in minutes. Monitoring and tracking of the bots have been automated. 
 
“Every business and brand will have to develop a bot strategy quickly. <a href="http://Gupshup.io">Gupshup.io</a> offers the most advanced tools globally for developers preparing to meet the explosive demand for messaging bpots and services,” said Beerud. 
 
The first 1000 API calls will be free and after that one has to pay $1 for every 1000 API calls. 
 
(Image credits: gupshup.io)

Now build a bot in minutes with the launch of Gupshup’s new platform

<a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/Getting-healthy-is-now-a-5-minute-job-No-nutritionists-not-required/articleshow/52027120.cms">Chat bots </a>are computer programs that mimic conversation with people using artificial intelligence. Imagine being able to talk to an app like you would to a human assistant. You can order a pizza online or find the right place for a perfect coffee after a hard day at work, all by chatting with a bot. 
 <keyword id="3328689" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Chat-bots">Chat bots</keyword> are a growing trend in the tech world at the moment. With <keyword id="1044234" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="bots">bots</keyword> brands/ companies/ business have the power to have conversations with their consumers through a combination of spoken or typed phrases giving an overall personalized experience as opposed to apps which force users to choose from available options from a drop down menu. The fact that bots let you instantly interact with the world around you is what is exciting all the players globally. 
 “Bots are the new apps. Bots will transform virtually every aspect of our lives, making it simpler and easier to engage with businesses and brands just by chatting with them. Every business and brand will have to develop a bot strategy quickly,” said Beerud Sheth, chief executive officer and founder of startup <keyword id="755674" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="GupShup">Gupshup</keyword>. 
 
1. Easy to build- <a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/Now-build-a-bot-in-minutes-with-the-launch-of-Gupshups-new-platform/articleshow/52027081.cms">Chat bots easier to build than apps</a>. One needs to be a developer to build an app but anyone and everyone can build a bot of their own on the bot building platforms available. These platforms are easy to use and even a layman can use them. 
 
2. Cheaper-<a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/Mark-Zuckerberg-hints-that-youll-be-able-to-chat-with-celebrity-bots-on-Messenger/articleshow/52018393.cms"> Chat bots</a> are free to use. Also the cost of developing a bot is way lesser than building an app. 
 
3. No download- Bots do not require any downloading or upgrading like that of an app. 
 
4. Easier to train and capable of handling wide range of tasks- <a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/You-can-now-program-and-build-your-own-insect-robot/articleshow/51950957.cms">Bots are easier to train</a> than training humans and are capable of handling a much wider range of tasks as compared to apps being offered by retailers and consumer business 
 
5. Storage- If you look at a smartphone today, it has limited space. It’s impossible to have so many different apps on your mobile phone. So, far we are living in the world when every company is trying to convince a user to download its app. If we think from a user’s point of view, why does he need to have so many apps to book a taxi or order food or stay healthy? Can it be done all one platform? And, the answer is yes; chat bots on existing <keyword id="6419729" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Messaging-apps">messaging apps</keyword> is the way to go! 
 
(Image credits: Business Insider.com)

5 ways chat bots are taking over messaging apps

<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image">TechCrunchA screenshot from the startup Viv, which was created by the founders of Siri</div></div></div>Bots are hot in Silicon Valley. Everyone's obsessed with "conversation as a platform," or the idea that you should be able to interact with a service with natural language, spoken or written, instead of in the traditional click-an-icon way you'd interact with a computer. <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/google-assistant-2016-5">Google</a>, <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-launches-its-messenger-platform-for-bots-2016-4">Facebook</a>, <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-ceo-satya-nadella-on-conversations-as-a-platform-and-chatbots-2016-3">Microsoft</a>, <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/the-inside-story-of-how-amazon-created-echo-2016-4">Amazon</a>, and <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/the-creators-of-siri-just-unveiled-a-new-virtual-assistant-that-blows-their-old-creation-out-of-the-water-but-theres-one-thing-companies-should-be-worried-about-2016-5">a slew</a> <a href="http://www.techinsider.io/hound-voice-assistant-app-blows-siri-away-2016-3">of startups</a> all rushing to find new ways to make it easier for users to connect to all the services they need through a single interface. Just this week, The Information reported that<a href="https://www.theinformation.com/apple-opening-siri-developing-echo-rival"> Apple plans to open up its virtual assistant, Siri,</a> to third-party developers who want to integrate their services. We've entered the <a href="http://www.theverge.com/2016/1/6/10718282/internet-bots-messaging-slack-facebook-m">age of bots.</a>But with the explosion of new companies and initiatives, there are some of the challenges and lessons learned: <h2><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image">www.flickr.com</div></div></div>Less C3PO, more R2D2</h2>Evernote founder and partner at VC firm General Catalyst, Phil Libin, believes that bots are the <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/evernote-founder-phil-libin-creating-incubator-for-bots-2016-3">most exciting tech he's seen since the iPhone</a> and that they'll rewrite the tech space like apps did in 2008.Libin, who leads incubator within the firm to experiment and build bot companies and has already announced his first investment - a <a href="http://techcrunch.com/2016/04/08/general-catalysts-phil-libin-eyes-bots-with-his-first-investment-in-stealth-bot-startup-begin/">company called Begin</a> - says that everything he's seen has taught him that the "first law of chatbots' ought to be that they shouldn't try to deceive you into thinking you're talking to a real person. If they do, people will just end up disappointed.In Star Wars terms, bots should be more like R2D2 than C3PO: You talk to R2D2 naturally, but it doesn't sound like a human in response, whereas C3PO does talk like a proper human despite being a robot. "I think most bot developers have this C3P0 model stuck in their heads, where they're trying to make bots speak like humans and give them jokes and personality, but I think that's really misguided," he said.Beerud Sheth, CEO of a bot developer called Gupshup, agrees:"A bot that pretends to have human-like natural language processing and AI capability raises the user's expectations, which inevitably leads to disappointment," he says. "A bot that sets clear expectations about its capabilities (and limitations) will have a better shot at engaging and delighting the customer." <h2><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image">Shutterstock</div></div></div>Be a guide, not a butler </h2>That underscores another problem right now: Most <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/businesses-are-skeptical-about-chat-bots-2016-4">bots aren't that smart.</a> Or, as Libin puts it, we're still stuck in the "fart and flashlight" era of usefulness. So, bots need to make it clear what their limits are and try to help people get as much use out of them as possible. In other words, they should be guides not butlers. "A chat bot shouldn't just be responsive; it should also guide the conversation in the 'right' direction," Sheth says. Right at the beginning, the bot should introduce itself explaining its capabilities. If it can't answer something, it should respond with alternative suggestions about what it can answer. <h2>Don't bother me</h2>Especially in this early period, bots that send too many notifications are likely to get blocked. "Chatbots shouldn't proactively contact users unless they are providing some really valuable insight, otherwise, they come off as spammy," says Rob Mob, CEO of a Talla, which makes intelligent assistants for business. "In general people prefer reactive bots, but proactivity is fine in cases where the information is useful."He added that the most surprising thing Talla has learned is that bots shouldn't respond too quickly. People prefer a small delay, to make the interaction feel more like normal communication. <h2>Early days </h2>Although chatbots are "very weak" right now, Mikhail Naumov, president of the bot company Digital Genius, says that with time they'll grow up and be able to learn more quickly and deeply."I think right now we are in the 'Valley of Disillusionment' part of the hype cycle," Libin agrees. "The early stuff was all trivial and disappointing, so the people who were chasing trends are now skeptical. While people who are serious haven't even begun to deliver what they're working on. I think the people who are serious about them, it's going to take another several months for even the early work to start coming out. It's an exciting time." <div class="margin-top"> <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/pilot-smart-earpiece-translator-bluetooth-waverly-labs-indiegogo-2016-5">This smart earpiece translates languages as they are spoken</a></h3> <div> <div> <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="Q0eTdrMzE6Y7MKLq3gL6QxT3mPxisL02" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div> </div> </div> </div>

Why chatbots should be more like R2D2 than C3PO, and other lessons for Silicon Valley's hottest trend

Rohan Shravan was 24 years old when he founded Notion Ink, a <keyword id="138263" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="startup">startup</keyword> that designed India’s first tablet computer Adam. The device was launched five months before Apple placed the first version of the iPad on store shelves. 
 
At its international debut in the Consumer Electronics Show at Las Vegas in January 2010, one of the first to place an order for Adam was an employee at Apple headquarters in Cupertino. However, in the ensuing months as the iPad gained iconic status, Adam dropped by the wayside, felled by the lack of risk capital to grow the business. 
 “When I told venture capitalists that our product will be a challenger to <keyword id="10591" type="CITY" weightage="40" keywordseo="Samsung">Samsung</keyword> and Apple, they laughed at me,” said Shravan, a mechanical engineer from the Indian Institute of Technology in Kharagpur who initially bootstrapped the firm with personal savings of around Rs 6 lakh. 
 
Shravan’s experience is hardly unique. In the midst of an unprecedented entrepreneurial boom, several of those starting up say there are more hurdles than advantages in the Indian startup sector. Apart from the red tape and the lack of policy support there is also a shortage of true risk capital that can back edgy new ideas. 
 
Customers are unwilling to pay for untested products and many entrepreneurs choose the middle path fearing failure. “I was very aggressive, arrogant and fought like a warrior, the so-called experts advised me to tone down and be nice, which led to our downfall,” said Shravan who trained engineering students to work on Adam as a way to minimise staff costs. “Around 80 per cent of the employees were final year students; they were later snatched by Samsung and Motorola.” 
 
In recent years, several ventures including short messaging service GupShup, personalised news service Frrole and language keypad maker Luna Ergonomics have altered business models when faced with regulatory hurdles or the fear of rejection from investors and customers. 
 This at a time when many global technology companies including WhatsApp, <keyword id="6354576" type="CITY" weightage="40" keywordseo="Facebook">Facebook</keyword>, caller identification service Truecaller, home rental marketplace Airbnb, and question and answer site Quora count India as one of their fastest growing markets. 
 
Nearly 40 million of WhatsApp’s global user base of 450 million is in India. “India is our largest market with about 30 million users and continues to demonstrate great opportunities for us,” said Nami Zarringhalam, cofounder of Sweden’s Truecaller. When Amarpreet Kalkat started his company Frrole in 2011, he wanted to build a product that was tailored to a user’s area of interest. 
 
“I believed it could rival Google News,” said the 35-year-old entrepreneur. Eight months later, Kalkat started looking for funds and he had to answer the dreaded question, over and over again: “How do you make money?” Two years of running the company without external funding almost made him bankrupt. Kalkat was forced to start a new by changing his model to an enterprise product. 
 
At about the same time when Frrole was launched in Silicon Valley, a text and photo sharing app called Snapchat was born. It received $60 million (Rs 361 crore) in initial funding and was handling 150 million photos every day. 
 
Last year, the company rejected a $3 billion (Rs 18,000 crore) buyout deal from Facebook. “There is a very high chance that Frrole would still have been a social newspaper, if we were based in Silicon Valley,” said Kalkat whose company now has a dozen of enterprise customers. 
 
Parag Dhol, managing director at Inventus Capital Partners, said he has some sympathy with the entrepreneurs’ point of view. “But let me throw the question back at them—let us find at least one product from India where there are at least 100 million users,” said the investor who has backed firms such as Savaari Car Rentals, online bus ticketing site redBus and technology company TELibrahma. 
 
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Angel investor Sharad Sharma, who pushed Kalkat to alter his business model, is of the view that in Silicon Valley entrepreneurs can afford to not have a paying business. “Because they have the confidence that they will get bought over, here there is no such scene. It’s all about viability of the business,” said Sharma who participated in a $245,000 angel (Rs 1.4 crore) funding round in Frrole this April. 
India has a far worse ratio of venture capital exits as compared to Israel and the US, according to data compiled by think tank iSpirt and investment bank Signal Hill. Few large companies are interested in buying out startups or using their products, impeding growth of local companies. 
 
“We had all the ingredients to become a large global company,” says Abhijit Bhattacharjee, 43-year-old founder of Luna Ergonomics, the maker of the Indian language keypad Panini. 
 
Named after an ancient Sanskrit grammarian, the technology makes it possible to type quickly and easily in all Indian languages on the mobile phone. The company which has received patents for its Korean language interface did not find takers amongst Indian telecom companies. 
 
“Supporting Indian scripts on digital devices does not suit the strengths and roadmaps of these companies,” said Bhattacharjee, whose company last released an Urdu keypad for iOS, Android, and PC in 2013. “Which large enterprise buys cutting edge technology from startups? When there are not early customers, how can you expect to have $1 billion companies?” asked Ashish Gupta, a senior managing director at Helion Venture Partners that backed group text messaging service GupShup. 
 
The Mumbai-based firm was launched just six months after microblogging site Twitter was launched in the US in July 2006. Within a year of inception the service had racked up 15 million users. 
 GupShup was a free, social, short messaging service that allowed users to communicate and connect with family, <keyword id="343" type="ENTERTAINMENT" weightage="40" keywordseo="Friends">friends</keyword> and followers using ordinary mobile handsets. But the telecom ecosystem and policies were a problem. 
 
“The regulations did not allow advertising. The operators kept the short messaging service rates high,” said Beerud Sheth, cofounder of Webaroo maker of GupShup product. The company had to shift focus from retail consumers and instead offer the messaging platform for enterprises. 
 
“They (government) should invest money in big ideas. They need to stop protecting big industries and start encouraging disruption and risk taking,” said Rahul Sood, partner at Microsoft Ventures and a technology entrepreneur, who sold the luxury computer business VodooPC to Hewlett Packard in 2006. 
 
Compare this to China, where the startup ecosystem is accelerating faster than anywhere in the world. There are around 1300 incubators and accelerators across the country compared with about 35 active accelerators in India. Shravan of Notion Ink has not lost hope yet. 
 
The entrepreneur is placing another bet. This time a personal computing robot called EVE, which he thinks will disrupt the market and will be in the market by 2017. “I will be jealous of my kids, they will be enjoying the rewards our hard work and same is true for the next generation of entrepreneurs,” he said.

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