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Gupshup

Conversational messaging (SaaS)India
✂️ Markdown
Peak $1.4 BillionToday
~-79%
from peak
  1. 🦄
    Became a unicorn
    2021
  2. 📈
    Peak valuation
    $1.4 Billion ’21
  3. 💔
    Became a Unitard
    2023
  4. 💸
    Last valuation
    ~$294M
Current status
Fidelity marked its stake down repeatedly, implying a valuation around $300M — roughly 80% below its 2021 unicorn peak

How it happened

Gupshup is a conversational-messaging platform that helps businesses reach customers over SMS, WhatsApp and other channels via APIs and chatbots. It hit a $1.4B valuation in 2021 when Fidelity and Tiger Global backed the conversational-AI boom; as growth-stage valuations corrected, Fidelity wrote its stake down repeatedly in public filings — to an implied ~$957M, then ~$486M, then roughly $300M, an ~80% markdown from peak. Employee reviews from the markdown years describe a long squeeze: the funding-fueled acquisition spree giving way to downsizing, layoff rounds recurring so regularly that staff spoke of them as routine, and raises and bonuses thinning while stock grants sat illiquid awaiting an IPO that kept receding.

Employee accounts paraphrase anonymous, unverified reviews posted publicly on Glassdoor ↗. See our methodology.

Source: TechCrunch / Business Standard / Inc42 (conversational-messaging/business-API SaaS company; valued at $1.4B when Fidelity and Tiger Global invested in 2021; Fidelity marked its stake down in stages — implying ~$957M, then ~$486M, then ~$300M — stripping unicorn status)

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