SMS GupShup secures $12 million additional funding

SANTA CLARA, USA & MUMBAI, INDIA: SMS GupShup, India’'s largest social network, have closed funding for a $12 million round led by Globespan Capital Partners and additional financing from existing investors Charles River Ventures and Helion Venture Partners.

This funding will allow SMS GupShup to expand into new territories, and to roll out new features such as Mobile CRM solutions for small businesses and corporate brands.

As one of the fastest growing ad-supported mobile communities in the world, SMS GupShup already enjoys a larger market share of users in India than any other online or mobile social networking site. The company also offers reply-all group messaging service in partnership with mobile carriers. The company is now poised to expand globally, starting with emerging markets that have high mobile adoption.

Launched in April 2007, SMS GupShup now serves 26 million users in over 2 million communities – double the number of communities supported just six months ago. These communities range from religious groups to sports teams to celebrities. Whether it’s daily poems, traffic reports or tribal news, GupShup is the centerpiece of connectivity in India. Over 100 advertisers currently run on the network including local insurance provider ICICI Lombard and international brands like Puma, Microsoft and Cadbury.

The company is growing at a rapid pace and now accounts for 5% of all text messages sent in India. Earlier this year, the company inked a deal with Facebook to enable Indian Facebook users to go mobile.

The mobile subscriber base in 2013 is set to exceed 771 million in India, according to Gartner Inc, and 5.8 billion globally, according to Portio Research.

Co-founder and chief executive Beerud Sheth says: “Our user base and revenues have grown substantially over the last year and we are also seeing strong interest from carriers worldwide. We expect to use the proceeds from this funding round to accelerate our growth and expand our operations globally, to make our products useful to each of the 4 billion mobile subscribers worldwide.”

To date, SMS GupShup has raised $37 million in funding and is now aggressively hiring. In only the past two months the service has increased its team headcount from 100 to 130 and is looking to fill another 20 positions in marketing, engineering and advertising sales.

Venky Ganesan, Managing Director, Globespan Capital, said: “SMS GupShup is bringing social messaging to the mobile masses. It is on track to be the next big global, social, mobile play. We are excited to be joining forces with this team to get billions of users to start ‘gupshupping’.”

“Since we last invested, SMS GupShup has shown huge growth in number of users and revenues. We’re excited to re-invest again to help the business realize its global potential as the social messaging solution for the masses,” said Devdutt Yellurkar of Charles River Ventures.

As part of this funding round, Venky Ganesan, Managing Director of Globespan Capital Partners, will join the SMS GupShup Board of Directors, which currently comprises of Devdutt Yellurkar (Charles River Ventures), Ashish Gupta (Helion Venture Partners), Jeff Hussey (Founder of F5 Networks, Inc.), Rakesh Mathur (Co-founder and Chairman of the Board) and Beerud Sheth (Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer).