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Mumbai: Mumbai-based company, SMS GupShup, a mobile group-SMS service company, has raised $10 million in series E round of funding, which was led by Tenaya Capital and existing investors Globespan Capital Partners, Helion Ventures and Charles River Ventures. The company has added Ravi Sundarajan as Vice President of marketing and Samir Parekh as Vice President of human resources. The series D was led by Globespan Capital Ventures to the tune of $12 million in funding.
SMS GupShup allows users to create mobile communities and broadcast messages to them. According to Co-Founder and CEO, Beerud Sheth, who was previously Co-Founder of Webaroo and Elance, the fund would be used to move into new markets and expand the team. The company also plans to replicate the model across the world; it is expanding into markets like Singapore and the Philippines.
SMS GupShup was founded in 2007 and has more than 200 employees as well as a distributed sales force of 1,000 contractors. It pays for bulk messages at wholesale prices in order to send messages to network of users, unlike in U.S., where both the sender and receiver are charged for text messages.
According to Venky Ganesan, Managing Director of Globespan Capital, there would be more than two billion people using the internet in the next two years, via mobile devices and SMS GupShup would play that trend. The company could be the Tenecent of India.
Tenaya Capital is a venture capital firm which invests in mid to late stage venture-backed technology companies. Their investments range from companies that are in the initial stages of revenue generation to companies seeking pre-IPO capital. It invests across technology sectors, including software, consumer Internet, IT infrastructure, communication and electronics.
Globespan Capital Partners is a global venture capital firm, with over $1 billion under management. It invests primarily in go-to-market rounds of information technology, Internet, mobile and cleantech companies.
Helion Venture Partners is an early to mid-stage, India-focused venture fund, investing in high growth technology powered businesses and consumer services.
Charles River Ventures is a venture capital firm, focused on early-stage investments in technology and new media companies. Its best investment prospect is an early-stage startup with a disruptive market-changing idea.
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