Gupshup
Headquarters
San Francisco, CAFounded
2004CEO / Founder
Beerud ShethEmployees
501-1000Funding
Series D+ — $604MProducts
1 product listedAvg. AI Score
7.8/10Website
gupshup.ai/
Profile updated
About Gupshup
Gupshup operates a conversational AI and business messaging platform that enables companies to reach and support customers across WhatsApp, RCS, SMS, voice, and chat. The company was founded in 2004 by Beerud Sheth, who started it as an SMS-based social messaging service in India before pivoting to enterprise messaging, and is headquartered in San Francisco, California.
Its Conversation Cloud combines the WhatsApp Business API, RCS business messaging, chatbot tooling, and AI agents that automate marketing, commerce, and customer support. Gupshup says it processes more than 120 billion messages a year for over 50,000 business customers across more than 130 countries, with particular strength in India, where WhatsApp is the dominant channel, and further operations in the Middle East, Latin America, Africa, and Southeast Asia. Beerud Sheth serves as chief executive officer.
Gupshup has raised more than $600 million since inception. It reached unicorn status in April 2021 with a $100 million Series F round led by Tiger Global at a $1.4 billion valuation, followed by a further $240 million in July 2021, though later investors including Fidelity subsequently marked down the valuation. In July 2025 the company added roughly $60 million in equity and debt from Globespan Capital Partners and EvolutionX Debt Capital. Gupshup employs several hundred people and has grown through acquisitions including voice provider Knowlarity, RCS firm DotGo, and conversational-AI startups Active.ai and AskSid; it has explored a public listing in India.
Specialties
Financials
Dated, source-cited figures. Estimates are marked.
Products by Gupshup
All products by Gupshup reviewed by our AI panel of experts.
How Our Review Panel Scores Gupshup
Six independent reviewer personalities assessed Gupshup's product on their own terms. They disagreed by 1.0 points — The Skeptic was the hardest to convince, The Domain Strategist the most positive.
Averaged across 1 reviewed product in our catalog. Scores are out of 10.
Competitive Landscape
Who Gupshup competes with, and how they differ.
Twilio is the global CPaaS market leader (~$5B 2025 revenue) reselling Meta's WhatsApp Business API alongside SMS/voice/email at enterprise developer scale — much larger than Gupshup but the closest apples-to-apples messaging-infrastructure competitor.
1 product reviewed on TopReviewedYellow.ai focuses on enterprise conversational-AI automation for support, commerce, and HR/ITSM (voice and chat bots for 700+ companies) built on top of messaging channels, rather than Gupshup's core CPaaS/WhatsApp-infrastructure layer — the two compete head-on for enterprise customer-engagement deals.
1 product reviewed on TopReviewed
Haptik is owned by Reliance Jio and concentrates on WhatsApp and conversational commerce for India-first brands, giving it deep JioMart/Reliance distribution that independent CPaaS vendor Gupshup lacks.
1 product reviewed on TopReviewed
Cognigy was acquired by NiCE in September 2025 for $955M and is now sold as part of NiCE's CXone contact-center AI suite, competing with Gupshup for large enterprise CX and voice-bot deals rather than SMB messaging automation.
1 product reviewed on TopReviewedWati is a lean WhatsApp Business API platform built for SMBs and D2C brands, undercutting Gupshup's more enterprise-oriented pricing and support model for simpler WhatsApp commerce and broadcast use cases.
1 product reviewed on TopReviewed
ManyChat targets SMB and creator marketing automation across Instagram DM, WhatsApp and SMS with a self-serve, no-code builder, competing with Gupshup at the lower end of the market that Gupshup's enterprise sales motion doesn't typically serve.
1 product reviewed on TopReviewedCompany Timeline
Key milestones in Gupshup's history, with sources.
- Funding
Raises $60M in equity and debt
Gupshup raises $60M in combined equity and debt from Globespan Capital Partners and EvolutionX Debt Capital; CEO Beerud Sheth says the round was left unpriced, amid a sharply reduced private valuation from earlier 2021 peak levels.
techcrunch.com - Acquisition
Acquires OneDirect (omnichannel customer service)
Gupshup acquires Bengaluru-based OneDirect, an omnichannel customer service platform, its fourth acquisition of 2022 in a five-month acquisition spree.
inc42.com - Acquisition
Acquires AskSid (conversational AI for retail)
Gupshup acquires AskSid, a conversational AI platform for ecommerce and retail companies, to make the shopping journey fully conversational.
businesswire.com - Acquisition
Acquires Active.ai (conversational banking)
Gupshup acquires Singapore-based Active.ai, a Conversational Banking as a Service (CBaaS) platform serving BFSI clients across 43 countries.
entrackr.com - Acquisition
Acquires Knowlarity Communications
Gupshup acquires cloud telephony and AI voice platform Knowlarity, which served over 6,000 customers across 65 countries, for a reported $100M.
entrackr.com - Acquisition
Acquires Dotgo (RCS messaging platform)
Gupshup acquires New Jersey-based Dotgo, a global leader in RCS Business Messaging, to expand its RCS reach into new markets including Africa.
businesswire.com - Funding
Series F extension — additional $240M, same $1.4B valuation
Gupshup raises a further $240M from Fidelity Management, Tiger Global, Think Investments, Malabar Investments, Harbor Spring Capital, Neuberger Berman, White Oak and others, extending the Series F at an unchanged $1.4B valuation and including a secondary share sale.
techcrunch.com - Funding
Series F — $100M led by Tiger Global at $1.4B valuation
Gupshup raises $100M from Tiger Global Management, its first funding since 2011, achieving unicorn status at a $1.4B valuation.
techcrunch.com - Milestone
Pivots from consumer SMS network to B2B enterprise messaging
Facing unsustainable SMS costs and blocked ad-based monetization ("we could neither subsidise nor monetise"), Gupshup pivots its messaging technology from a consumer social network to an enterprise/B2B messaging platform.
forbesindia.com - Launch
Pivots and rebrands as SMS Gupshup
Webaroo rebrands to SMS Gupshup, an SMS-based group-messaging social network; the service goes on to reach roughly 70 million users within three years, becoming India's largest social network at the time.
forbesindia.com - Founded
Founded as Webaroo Inc.
Beerud Sheth, Rakesh Mathur, and Dr. Milind R Agarwal found Webaroo Inc. in San Francisco, originally built as an offline search engine.
startuptalky.com
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