India's Gupshup acquires VC-backed OneDirect

The deal comes on the back of a strong fundraising run by Gupshup, which closed a USD 100m round – at a valuation of USD 1.4bn – in April 2021 and followed up with a USD 240m investment three months later. The latter round featured Fidelity, Think Investments, Malabar Investments, Harbor Spring Capital, Neuberger Berman, and White Oak.

Gupshup facilitates customer engagement through conversational messaging, essentially helping corporate customers execute marketing strategies. Its system powers more than 6bn messages a month on behalf of over 39,000 brands, including Facebook, Twitter, Google, Paytm, Reliance Jio, Flipkart, HSBC, Oyo, and Xiaomi.

The acquisition of OneDirect – an omnichannel, artificial intelligence-enabled (AI) platform that operates in India, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East – is intended to strengthen the company’s suite of conversational solutions.

OneDirect was part of Coraza Technologies, which was established in 2010 and received USD 21m from Sequoia across three rounds of funding in 2011-2015. Trifecta Capital also provided debt funding, according to AVCJ Research. Sequoia re-upped again in 2016, joined by American Express Ventures and East Ventures. RB Investments and ru-Net backed the company in 2017 and 2018.

There were two key assets: personal assistant platform Tapzo, formerly known as Akosha.com and Helpchat; and OneDirect. Tapzo was acquired by Amazon for around USD 40m in 2018.

OneDirect is best known for Agent Assist, which helps configure workflows for thousands of sales agents by integrating with existing customer relationship management (CRM) and helpdesk systems. Users can manage customer interactions across multiple channels – such as SMS, WhatsApp, Instagram, Google Business Messenger, voice, and email – through a unified dashboard interface.

The company has processed over 1bn customer interactions across 10 languages for the likes Canara Bank, Tata Capital, SBI Card, Paytm, Whirlpool, Acer, Oyo, McDonald’s, KFC, Tata Sky, Puma, and Flyin. It claims users have reported an average 40% improvement in customer satisfaction and a 25% reduction in operational expenditure.

Gupshup already provides no and low-code chatbot automation tools that triage incoming tickets, addressing frequent customer issues and freeing up time for agents to handle more complex support queries. The addition of OneDirect is intended to give agents greater visibility into customer profiles and past interactions, while enabling social media monitoring and providing feedback.

“Customer support is being transformed with conversational experiences that deliver instant, personalized experiences using both automated and manual solutions across a range of messaging channels. Businesses are using these solutions at scale to dramatically increase customer delight and reduce support cost,” said Beerud Sheth, co-founder and CEO of Gupshup, in a statement.

“OneDirect, with their proven leadership in helping leading brands transform omni-channel customer service, is a valuable addition to our conversational engagement platform.”

The size of the transaction was not disclosed. The statement identifies Sequoia, American Express, and ru-Net as key investors. Bharat Singh, an operating partner at Sequoia, noted that the acquisition will “help both companies unlock new growth opportunities and further scale their enterprise customer experience offerings.”

• Tweet  
• Facebook  
• LinkedIn  
• Google plus  
• Save this article  
• Send to  

• Topics
• South Asia
• Trade sale
• Technology
• Support services
• India
• enterprise software
• TMT
• Sequoia Capital