Gupshup nabs $240M to energy messaging channels

Conversational messaging platform Gupshup today announced that it raised $240 million led by Tiger Global Management, with participation from Fidelity Management, Think Investments, Malabar Investments, Harbor Spring Capital, and other individuals. The tranche, which values the organization at $1.64 billion, will be used to create new tools, infrastructure, and services although expanding Gupshup’s worldwide attain, CEO Beerud Sheth stated.

The pandemic has accelerated digital transformation for enterprises, in some instances driving the need to have for messaging services. Offline firms are moving on-line although on-line firms are supplying more items, and each are hunting for tools to far better engage prospects. Thirty-six % of customers report utilizing on-line live chat, according to a GetApp survey. And a majority say they’d a lot favor to use messaging versus phone channels if provided the decision.

Gupshup, which was founded in 2014, offers a chatbot authoring service that makes it possible for developers to build, deploy, and publish chatbots across more than 30 channels. Prior to beginning the organization, Sheth launched the freelancing platform Upwork, which went public on Nasdaq in October 2018.

“Gupshup was early to see the power of text messaging to deliver content ubiquitously to every mobile user worldwide. [It] builds platforms and tools to help enterprises do better customer engagement through conversational experiences delivered via messaging channels,” Sheth told VentureBeat by means of e mail. “Just as every business had to build websites in the mid-’90s, they will now have to build conversational experiences. This is the new digital storefront — this is where the users are and business have to engage them on their terms in their favorite messaging apps.”

Powering enterprise messaging

Apart from supporting messaging channels like SMS and WhatsApp, Gupshup presents Gupshup GIP, an IP-based service for smartphones that features finish-to-finish encrypted messages with buttons, ecommerce flows, and mini games. It comes in two flavors: GIP Native, which embeds in native messaging apps, and GIP Widget, a device-agnostic chat widget.

Gupshup also presents AI models for message categorization and all-natural language processing. On-device models study incoming messages and classify them into categories and subcategories like “transactional,” “banking,” and “credit alert,” developing visualizations for components in the message like receipt amounts, account numbers, and codes. Meanwhile, server-side models interpret consumer queries sent to chatbots, enabling the chatbots to detect the intent behind messages and respond appropriately.

“Thousands of developers and enterprises use the Gupshup bot platform to build [AI-powered] chatbots for their respective use cases,” Sheth stated. “The models were trained using sample text messages across many variations. This technology is deployed in over 100 million smartphones.”

Gupshup claims to help more than one hundred,000 developers and enterprises, delivering messages to more than 300 million customers. India and other “mobile-first” ecosystems stay some of the company’s biggest markets, but Gupshup’s consumer base has expanded for the duration of the pandemic, with annual recurring income hitting $150 million at the finish of 2020.

“We saw over 80% growth from pre-pandemic levels,” Sheth stated. “Through these chat conversations, businesses [are realizing that they can drive] drive marketing, sales, support and more … With conversational experiences, a customer could simply interact through text chat with a bank rather than calling a call center … Through the same chat conversation, the business can upsell or cross-sell — a new credit card, for instance — and sign the customer for personalized marketing alerts in the future. For the business, it delivers greater customer satisfaction, greater sales, and lower costs through automation.”

The most current funding round brings Gupshup’s total raised to more than $390 million.

Originally appeared on: TheSpuzz