SMS GupShup raises $10 million funds

MUMBAI, INDIA: SMS GupShup, India’s largest social network and group messaging provider, said on Wednesday that it has received fresh $10 million investment from Tenaya Capital.

Beside Tenaya Capital, Globespan Capital Partners, Helion Ventures and Charles River Ventures are the early investors in the company, taking up the total private equity to $47 million.

According to Beerud Seth, SMS GupShup CEO, the funds will be used sincerely and judiciously in reaching the company’s goals in three areas — research and development of innovative products, strengthening sales and marketing and international expansion.

“For tech companies, it is compelling to develop innovative products that bring value to customers,” Seth said. Th company’s innovative products include small and large group SMS and voice-enabled SMS.

“For the small group SMS product, we have already signed with five Indian operators and it will be rolled out in a couple of months. This SMS product offers features such as reply all, mark CC, which are similar features found in email,” Seth informed.

A small group SMS product can constitute up to seven members, while for enterprises it can take up 40 members. This apart, the voice-enabled SMS product will use the SMS platform to deliver voice message.

Emphasizing on SMS, Seth said that SMSes are used by people as well as businesses and added the voice and SMS work across mobile devices including low-cost handsets as well as smartphones. “However, the voice-enabled SMS will cross language and illiteracy barriers in India,” he pointed out.

The Mumbai-based company has over 50 million registered users and 25,000 plus small and large businesses on board. According to Vishwanath Ramachandran, Webaroo.com’s co-founder and CTO, globally around 4 billion SMSes are sent through the SMS GupShup platform every month.

“Beside the group and voice SMS products, we are developing Andriod-based messaging application for smartphones. Our voice SMS product targeted at businesses will largely be useful for customer relationship management (CRM). Though the product is not launched yet in the market, currently it has 10 beta customers,” Ramachandran informed.

Apart from India, SMS GupShup also plans to expand in the emerging markets. “We plan to offer smartphone capabilities which will allow us to reach out to other markets. However, we are already present in The Philippines, Sri Lanka and other Asian countries such as Malaysia, Bahrain, Indonesia and Vietnam,” Seth informed.

According to Seth, the company has been valued around Rs 1000 crore. “We project our profit around Rs 100 crore in the next 6-9 months,” he added.