 Hello, welcome everyone to the Euforium Talk Show. We have with us today Mr. Birout Shate, co-founder and CEO of Gupture, a unicorn based in Silicon Valley. It is absolutely an honor to have you here, Mr. Shate. Thanks, Kanchin. Thanks for having me here. It must be late evening in San Francisco, right? Yes, but I keep India hour, so my day is just beginning. I have a lot of calls. Okay, so I would like to start this conversation to, you know, by understanding the Gupture journey. I mean, you started this platform nearly two decades ago. So what was in your mind then and how conversational engagement domain has evolved over the last 18, 20 years? Yeah, well, you're right. I think it's about 17 years or so. And I think, you know, in the beginning, I mean, we saw the power of, you know, when we started the mobile revolution was happening. And there were another 1, 2, 3 billion people getting connected for the first time, right? They were not on the internet, but they were getting digitally connected for the first time. And those early feature phones, mobile phones, right, really the lowest common denominator was actually SMS, right? That was the only thing that worked on every mobile device. So I think the key insight at that time was, you know, if you can use SMS as the transport layer to deliver content to millions of people, then, you know, for the first time, you can deliver rich, interesting content to billions of people. That was really the key idea. And then the early version of Gupture actually was a social network. It was a consumer service, right? It was kind of like Twitter, where you could publish and subscribe for messages that became immensely popular actually grew to about 70 million users. But then, you know, we were subsidizing all of that SMS messaging traffic at that time. And it got prohibitively expensive. It was too expensive to subsidize. And then for different reasons, we couldn't monetize it either. So I think at that point, we had to pivot to a different model. And then we switched to the enterprise model and, you know, and then the rest is history. I can go into more details as well. But that's sort of, that's how we got started. It's been a long journey with quite a rollercoaster with lots of ups and downs. But, you know, hey, you know, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, right? So I would also like to know how Gupture is helping businesses transform, you know, cross industry verticals. Yeah, so I think so, like I said, right, once we pivoted to the enterprise model, we, you know, enterprises like large banks or e-commerce companies or education and travel companies and so on, they have millions of consumers, and they need to communicate and send updates to them, right? So in the beginning, you know, or until recently, a lot of these messages were almost entirely on SMS, right? So you get all of these notifications saying, you know, you used your credit card, here's your OTP, you know, your order is confirmed, your package is arriving, you know, you can upgrade your flight and things like that. All of those messages were all happening on SMS. Now, more recently, as new technology has emerged, you can also send messages through WhatsApp or through Instagram or through these other channels. And when you, when you do that, it's no longer just a one-way notification, but you can also have a two-way, meaning the user can also respond, right, which enables a two-way conversation. So as that is happening, more and more businesses are now using the rich interactive, you know, conversations with consumers to do all kinds of things to do, you know, to do marketing, to do commerce, to do support and so on. So anyway, I think in a nutshell, what Gapshab does is we provide the tools to enterprises to help them engage their customers better through conversations, right? Through conversational messaging, through conversational voice, you know, to do marketing, commerce and support. And I think it's an exciting opportunity. There's a lot of growth in this space. Enterprises are seeing enormous value and returns coming out of this. And, you know, I think it's, you know, because everybody, I mean, you think about it in countries like India or in regions like Latin America and other places, they may not be using the web, they may not download a lot of apps, but they all have WhatsApp, right? They all have messaging, either SMS or WhatsApp. And therefore, it's really is the lowest common denominator in the emerging markets. And I think it's, you know, it's very, very critical. It's almost the primary channel of customer engagement and customer interaction for enterprises. So it's really exciting. And that's, you know, we really provide all the tools to enable all of this. I think Instagram has also, you know, come up in a big way in the last few years. So are you also working with Instagram, you know, platform? Yeah. So I think, you know, one important distinction to make is all of these social media platforms, there's a consumer angle, which is consumers interacting with each other. And then there is the business messaging API, right? So Instagram, which is immensely popular, but recently, just a few months ago, they started enabling businesses to, you know, to automatically communicate with consumers. So now that is also emerging as a new opportunity for businesses to, you know, they can write some software and build these automated chatbots, right? Which means if any user likes an Instagram, an item on the Instagram photo, I mean, they can literally have a little conversation saying, do you have it in this color? Do you have it in the size? And then actually pay for it and buy it right there, right, without having to go to a different website or anything like that. So yeah, I think we are seeing, you know, so WhatsApp business messaging is growing fast. Even Instagram business messaging is also growing. And I think, yeah, in fact, enterprises should be taking advantage of these things to really drive a lot more engagement in commerce. So artificial intelligence has also, you know, it is transforming the digital marketing domain now. So how AI-enabled conversation marketing is helping brands to reach, you know, wider consumer segments? Great question, right? So the moment you can have an enterprise can have a two-way conversation with consumer, you know, consumers can submit any kind of query, right? They might say, okay, can you show me a red shirt? Or do you, you know, can you show me gifts between, you know, you know, 5000 and 10,000 rupees, for example, or, you know, by budget, by size, by color, by shape, and so on, they can select and ask queries like that, right? Now, for a business which may receive millions of queries like that, right, they have to automate it. But automating queries phrased in natural human language can be quite challenging. So that's where AI comes in, right? Within AI, especially technologies like natural language processing or voice technologies as well, they can help an enterprise automatically understand what the user is asking and then look up on the back end and then recommend the right product or the right item and so on. So that's where conversational AI comes in. It enables businesses to build these, you know, very delightful engaging experience so much so that for the consumer, it feels like, oh, I'm just chatting with a human, right? And they may not know or care whether it's a human or a chatbot so long as it works, right? And I think for a, for a business, right, it makes it much more effective, right? Because the alternative is they'll have to have hundreds of customer support agents, right, responding to all these queries. But if they can use AI, then they can automate it, or at least they can automate most of the queries, if not every query, right? And the frequently asked common queries are easier to automate. So they can automate those queries and escalate the more complex one to human agents. But AI is really transforming the conversational industry and businesses are, you know, the tools have gotten very good. I think AI models have gotten very good as well. So what was, you know, just an idea, even a couple of years ago is now the technology is all there, and you can do it in different languages. You can do it, even it can understand accents, you know, for spoken voice sort of understanding. So it's become very, very powerful. I would also like to know the new growth drivers for you and also your, you know, expansion plans. Sure. I think, well, firstly, you know, I think in terms of expansion plans, if you've read recent news stories, I mean, Gapshap acquired about five to six companies just in the last maybe nine months, right? So the first thing for us is to unify all of these products to create a really advanced product. But as it stands right now, Gapshap is really unique. We are the only ones that can offer a comprehensive toolkit for enterprises for all of their customer engagement needs. We can offer messaging tools, voice tools, we can offer chatbot development capability and conversational AI across different languages and so on, right? So we have, through these acquisitions, we've built out probably the most advanced and comprehensive product stack, right? So we continue to invest a lot, right? We've always, you know, all of Gapshap's success has all been built on a foundation of product and engineering, right? We invest a lot in that and now with the very advanced product, we're going to continue scaling, adding more features, more capabilities. We listen to our customers very carefully and do that. So, you know, R&D is sort of one important growth driver for us. And then another one is international expansion, right? A year ago, we were maybe in five countries, but now we are in about 40 plus countries. We have teams and customers in many, many countries around the world and we're seeing a lot of traction in Latin America and Southeast Asia and Middle East and Africa as well. So we're really expanding dramatically on those sides. And maybe the third thing is just, you know, developing sort of a lot of innovative solutions in partnership with our customers, right? So we listen carefully to, you know, to what they need or what they do with the tools that we provide them. And then, you know, if they need anything extra, we'll package it up quickly, we'll create new solutions and launch new products to the market. So, you know, I think that's working out, you know, really well. So I have not two questions. Are more acquisitions on the card? And also what is happening at the innovation front? Because now you have, you know, so many collaborate on the part that's like one that it asked it, active AI. And I suppose one more, Nolarity, who you acquired this year only. Yes, yeah, all of these companies, right? So Nolarity gave us the voice capability, Wanderer gives us the agent dashboard capability, I think SID and Active AI gave us the conversational AI capabilities, and so on, right? And there's also dot go, which gave us the RCS capability as well. So I think it's been very effective in helping us build out a highly scalable product, right? I think, will there be more acquisitions? You know, it really depends. I mean, I don't think we start with an assumption of wanting to do an acquisition, right? If you find a company that's a good fit, that is complimentary, they have a good team and culture and so on, then, you know, of course, we'll do it. But you know, we're always looking, but there's nothing in the pipeline right now. I think apart from that, you know, we're going to continue in terms of innovation. There's a lot of new things coming up, right? So for example, because we have the messaging and voice capability, right? So we expect what's called voice deflection to messaging, right? Meaning, if the call center is busy, then instead of asking the customer to stay on hold, we can redirect the message, we can redirect the conversation to a messaging experience, right? Saying, hey, sorry, we couldn't pick up your call, but you know, here's a chat pod that can help you accomplish your task, right? So that's just one example. But we are, you know, doing also, we are integrating call centers with voice bots, right? With chat pod experiences, we are creating some very innovative marketing experiences, right? So businesses can engage their customers, activate their customers, you know, send out deals and offers and so on. We are enabling commerce, right? So here's something amazing, right? Most of us know that you can have a digital storefront on a website or a mobile app, okay? But what many businesses may not realize is it's now possible to have a storefront inside WhatsApp itself or Instagram, right? Where you can list your catalog, you can have shopping cart, you can put prices and even payments and so on. So the whole end to end shopping experience is possible, right? Inside that. And maybe the last thing that, you know, in particular, your customers and viewers might be interested in is, you know, using Instagram and channels like that to integrate sort of social media marketing with conversational messaging, right? So for example, when a user complains on Facebook or on Twitter or Instagram saying, hey, you know, I have this problem with this enterprise, well, the enterprise, you know, enterprises can set up a chatbot to instantly look at the complaint, resolve, you know, have a little private conversation with them to resolve the complaint and then convert it into a testimonial, right? So because if you can address these issues instantly and automatically, then it really, you know, help you manage your brand reputation and drive a lot of customer satisfaction. So I think the possibilities are endless. And I think, you know, businesses really have to, no matter what they're trying to do, you know, this is going to become the primary means of digital engagement and digital communication with your customers. Apart from staff and Instagram, do you see any other, you know, communication platform that is coming up in a big way that could be, you know, that could be the workshop in future? Well, you know, I think there are many channels that are coming up and ultimately, you know, I'm sure, you know, more than one will succeed. So for example, RCS is another messaging channel that's coming up. There's also Google business messages, GBM, that is emerging as well. I think SMS continues to be, you know, very, very valuable and so on. And then Gupshub itself has launched an innovative channel that we call GIP, right, which is just short for Gupshub IP messaging channel. So, you know, each of these channels, they serve a different purpose, a different use case, you know, they have different features and capabilities, maybe even different price points, right? So ultimately, the point is, you know, an enterprise wants to engage all their users no matter where they are, right? And they, they enterprises tend to be kind of channel-agnostic, meaning it doesn't matter what channel it is so long as they can engage with their customer, right? So, so I think, you know, in a way, as you have multiple channels, it makes it, it allows them to do more things and more rich things, you know, experiences, deliver rich experiences to their customers. How is the consumer engagement, you know, it differs, you know, in India and US, maybe, I mean, what, what, what is the difference which you have observed? You know, I think the biggest difference really is the medium of engagement, right? If you look at US, the Western markets, right, US and maybe Western Europe, it tends to be a very web-centric ecosystem, right? Because every, every business, every brand, they have a website, okay? And, and some of them will have apps, but all the transactions and engagement and commerce and conversations and so on is all focused on the website. So when they use messaging, they will use it just to drive the user to the website where the real commerce happens. But when you look at the emerging markets, you look at India or even Brazil and Indonesia and so on, there, you know, you don't have a web dominant or a web-centric ecosystem, right? Because there are many more users on messaging apps, right? What is it? Maybe 500 million users on messaging apps versus maybe 100 or 150 million on the web that we know it and so on. So messaging is where, you know, you're going to have far more users, far more reach, and, and then within, you know, these enterprises also want to do all that rich interaction within the messaging channel, right? Because you can't, you can't just send a message and send the user back to the website because consumers are not doing that. They're not used to that. On the other hand, if you're inside WhatsApp and you say, oh, here's a catalog, here's an item, here you can, you know, create a shopping card, pay for it, look at deals, interact with different options and so on, and all of that happens right inside the messaging channel, right? Then, then it's just everybody would use it. So I think that's honestly the biggest difference. The medium of engagement in the Western markets is the web, the medium of engagement in the emerging markets is, or is the messaging channel, right? And I think There are different devices. Well, I mean, are we, are we, are we using more mobile phones here and laptops here or in the US also people are using mobile to transit through web? Well, yeah, no, I think, I think emerging markets are much more mobile first, right, or mobile centric. Of course, everybody in the US also has mobile phones and so on, but you know, in the US people also spend a lot of time at their desk in the office or, or at home, right? And people are very familiar and not only that, the habit was formed, right, in the mid 90s when the web came about. So everybody's been using websites. So even when mobile phones came about, people continue to use these websites from the mobile phone. But emerging markets were mobile first, you know, meaning the first digital experience was the mobile phone, which is a smaller screen. And within that, you know, it's very messaging centric because everybody uses messaging in a way that even in the US email is a big deal and, you know, web is a much, much bigger deal. I think in emerging markets, it's really mobile first, messaging first ecosystems and therefore, you know, the impact of web or email or even apps is a lot less than what it'll be for messaging in the emerging markets. So one question at a time when many unicorns are facing downturns, you know, due to a range of reasons, maybe inflation and, you know, fuel, fuel price and also Ukraine, Russia, what, how does Gapsha remain profitable? Oh, I think, well, firstly, you know, we've been profitable for nearly 10 years, okay, through all kinds of ups and downs in the markets, you know, we've maintained, we built a profitable business. And I think we will continue to do that and we'll continue to stay that way, right? So firstly, we just we built that muscle of, you know, running managing a business prudently of being careful with our expenses of focusing on high ROI activities. We invest in areas where we expect, you know, to grow or to drive revenue and so on, right? So we really, we listen carefully to our customers, we don't get carried away with, with recruiting excessively, right? And so on, we'll, we'll, we'll get good talented people and only as much as we need. You know, and not sort of, I think a lot of, a lot of young entrepreneurs, first time entrepreneurs and so on, when they get raise a lot of funding, they assume that, oh, great, you know, we can spend a lot and we can do all of these things. But if you're not careful, you know, then your expenses can get ahead of your, of your projected revenues and so on. And that's when problems can start. So I think really, you know, some of it is just being mature about it, being commonsensical about it, being very thoughtful and deliberate, right? Because, yeah, and, you know, as a, as a business, you kind of have to, you know, you can invest ahead of the market a little bit, but you can't do it too much, right? Sometimes it takes time for the market to, for your customers to learn and adopt and grow your products and so on. So you have to basically, you know, analyze all these different factors and, and just, you know, not get carried away. Or if you start thinking, oh, great, you know, we are a unicorn, we have a lot of money, let's go spend it all. You know, there's no guarantee that once a unicorn, you'll stay forever a unicorn, right? There's no such thing. I think you kind of have to keep growing your business, building it, scaling it up. And so that's how it works. Very important points indeed. And now last question, what would be your, you know, advice to aspiring entrepreneurs? Oh, I think, you know, I have a lot of battle scars and bruises, and therefore a lot of advice, you know, that, and lessons that I've learned. I think there are, I mean, depends, you know, I think there is a startup journey can be a roller coaster, it can be lots of ups and downs. So it's important not to get overly depressed or overly euphoric. I think you want to be stay balanced. I think it's also, you know, be very customer centric, right? Listen carefully to the customer, figure out the product market fit. If they like your product, make sure you understand why, but if they don't like it, even more important to understand why they don't, and then see how you can kind of improve it. I mean, what else, you know, having a good team is super important. I think that makes, you know, if you have a great team that lead to great products, which then lead to good customers and revenues, and so on. So don't compromise on the team that you're building as well. You know, I think it's a risky journey, right? So you need a lot of grit and perseverance and patience, right? So you can't get very impatient. I mean, as we discussed earlier, right? The Gupship journey has been a very long one. And there have been many, many, many difficult years, right? Almost, I don't know, maybe the first 12 to 14 years were very, very challenging. So I mean, just think about it. When entrepreneurs start, they don't think about such long timelines, but sometimes it happens, right? It's not by choice, but, you know, you kind of have to be persistent as well, right? But ultimately, I think, look, the most important advice I can give is, you know, be entrepreneurial, take a chance. You know, I think entrepreneurship is the ultimate sort of prosperity generating machine for society, you know, for the country. And I think even if you fail, you learn so much more. And in India, I mean, there's just such a hot job market, if you will, that you'll get picked up. So there's really no failure, right? I mean, you attempted to do something, maybe it didn't succeed. You know, you can go back to the job that you think you would have had very likely, right? So there's not as much risk as you might think. But on the other hand, if it succeeds, right, it'll be a sort of complete game changer. So, you know, I think I would encourage more people to take risks. I mean, it's a great time to be doing entrepreneurship in India where there's a huge need for technology in general. I think the odds are more in your favor. So nicely explained. Thank you, Mr. Sashit. I know for talking with you for him. Thank you very much. Thanks, Kanchit, for having me again. Thank you.