Gupshup turns unicorn after raising $100 Mn from Tiger Global

It is raining unicorns in India. A nation so dependent on the vagaries of monsoon, is now enjoying a bountiful shower of unicorns with Gupshup now joining ShareChat as the second startup to join the elite league this Thursday.

Gupshup, an enterprise messaging solutions provider, joins the unicorn club by raising $100 million from Tiger Global at a valuation of $1.4 billion.

The latest funding will be followed by a second close with additional funds raised from more investors which the company will announce later.

Gupshup will use this investment to scale its product and go-to-market initiatives globally, the company said in a statement. 

For the scorekeepers: this is the tenth unicorn of 2021, the sixth unicorn of the week, and second for the day. 

Gupshup now joins ShareChat, Groww, PharmEasy, CRED, Meesho, Digit Insurance, Innovaccer, Infra.Market and Five Star Business Finance (NBFC), all of which turned unicorn in 2021. 

San Francisco-based Gupshup, with primary operations in India, the US and UK, offers an API that businesses can use to enable messaging services to engage with their customers on platforms like WhatsApp, Twitter, Facebook, and Slack among others. 

The Beerud Sheth-led company said its API enables over 100,000 developers and businesses to build messaging and conversational experiences delivering over 6 billion messages per month over 30 messaging channels.

Gupshup last raised funds in 2011, when it had received an investment of $10 million in its Series E round led by Tenaya Capital. 

Originally started as Webaroo in 2005 by Seth and Junglee’s Rakesh Mathur, the company was renamed Gupshup in 2007-2008. Initially, it let users post messages on public bulletin boards and meet new people, while companies could run their own forums for engaging users. 

However, the idea didn’t scale and Gupshup pivoted to become an enterprise-focused messaging platform in 2014. 

The pivot worked and the company now claims that its API enables developers and businesses to build messaging and conversational experiences across various messaging channels including WhatsApp Business.

In December 2020, the company also launched a two-way communication and messaging solution for enterprises to send customised SMS using images, audio, videos and documents. In a release, Seth claimed that the company has a revenue run rate of $150 million.

Gupshup competes with the likes of Zendesk, Twilio, Yalochat and Nexmo.

Tiger Global has been on a bit of a spending spree lately. Apart from Gupshup, it led a $100 million round in Infra.Market, a $105 million round in Innovaccer, a $502 million round in ShareChat and an $83 million round in Groww, in just 2021, which took all the four companies to unicorn status. It also participated in Cred’s $215 million Series D round. 

Entrackr had exclusively reported that Tiger Global is also in talks to infuse a new round in enterprise-focused group insurance platform Plum Insurance.