About Us
GupShup is a social messaging service that enables users to share their short messages, privately with friends, or publicly with all. The service works on every mobile device and can be accessed via SMS, web, wap or mobile apps. It has over 60 million users in India, and expanding internationally.
Businesses use GupShup to acquire new customers or engage existing ones. GupShup enables brands and businesses to reach millions of users with targeted mobile messages.
Team
Beerud Sheth
Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer
Beerud is a co-founder of GupShup and is responsible for the overall strategy, execution and growth of GupShup. Under his stewardship, GupShup has grown into India's largest mobile social messaging service reaching nearly 60 million users in India, and has served the marketing needs of over 500 large brands and 25K small businesses.
Prior to GupShup, Beerud founded Elance, the world's largest online services marketplace. He played various leadership roles at different stages of the company's growth, including product & business strategy, product management, marketing & business development, and he remains on the board of directors. Prior to founding Elance, Beerud worked in the financial services industry - modeling, structuring, and trading fixed income securities and derivatives at Merrill Lynch and before that at Citicorp Securities. Beerud's graduate research, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab, involved developing autonomous learning software agents for personalized news filtering.
Beerud earned an M.S. in computer science from Massachusetts Institute of Technology & a B.Tech in Computer Science from IIT Bombay, where he was awarded the Institute Silver Medal. He is a frequent speaker at industry events and is a holder of 2 technology patents.
Dr. Milind R. Agarwal, Ph.D.
Founding Executive and Chief Community Officer
Milind is a founding executive and is responsible for driving the engagement and growth of the GupShup community. He is responsible for ensuring that the community grows in a healthy fashion. He oversees publisher engagement, user engagement, and community safety. Milind also heads business development with content partners, bringing top content publishers to the GupShup platform. In his earlier role at GupShup, Milind was the VP of Sales, driving substantial revenue growth.
Prior to GupShup, Milind managed a logistics and supply chain business for 10 years.
Milind has a Bachelor's degree in Electronics & Communication from Manipal University, an MBA in Logistics and Procurement from Michigan State University and Ph.D. in Philosophy from Mumbai University. Milind is a visiting and guest faculty at various management institutes. He has co-authored a book - "Doing Business in Emerging Markets: Entry and Negotiation Strategies", published by Sage Publications in 2002.
Dylan Carlson
Vice President, Engineering - Architecture
Dylan functions as the chief engineering architect of GupShup's software, hardware and network systems, including migration of services to the cloud. In his previous role as VP, Operations at GupShup, Dylan lead the design, deployment and growth of GupShup's systems and network infrastructure.
Dylan brings in over 16 years of experience in heterogeneous systems engineering with senior and management roles at Alldata, Autozone, 3Path and Hewlett-Packard Co. As a consultant, he designed and implemented Internet architectures for many, large and small, financial and medical firms in New York.
Dylan studied aerospace engineering before pursuing career opportunities in IT. He is an active supporter of open source software and protocols. He has been a direct contributor to Linux and FreeBSD operating systems since the 1990s.
Tathagata Mitra
Vice President, Product Management
Tathagata, also called TM, leads product management at GupShup. Under the ambit of product management, TM looks at product definition, product strategy, roadmap, user experience and user engagement across all of GupShup's products.
Prior to GupShup, TM has worked in consumer Internet and nanotechnology start-ups, across India and the US. A technology enthusiast, TM spent a few months implementing a technology platform for the Parliamentary constituency of East Delhi, an experience which helped him to connect deeply with the Indian user.
TM is an alumnus of IIT, Bombay and University of California, San Diego. He is also a visiting faculty at NMIMS, a leading business school in India. His GupShup group is ManInBombay.
Dr. Viswanath (Vishy) Ramachandran, Ph.D.
Founding Executive and Chief Technology & Operations Officer
Vishy is a founding executive at GupShup, associated with the company since its inception. He is responsible for the definition, development, deployment and support of GupShup's products. These products helped the community scale to over 60 million users, and the messaging platform scale to over 3 billion messages a month. He also oversees the overall operations of GupShup's business.
Prior to GupShup, Vishy worked for the world's first social network Friendster in engineering management, responsible for their instant messaging product. He also worked at enterprise software companies NextLabs (on document security and policy compliance solutions) and Siebel (engineering management of the web server tier). Prior to that, Vishy helped build video on demand software as well as a web browser for TV at Moxi Digital (acquired by Digeo Inc.). He started his career at Netscape Communications Corp. as a software developer on the web server, Java and JavaScript engines, and progressed into engineering management roles in Netscape's browser and instant messaging products.
Vishy has a Master's and Ph.D. in Computer Science from Brown University and a B.Tech. in Computer Science from IIT Bombay. His research has been published in international journals and conferences and his prior work in the industry has been granted patents. His GupShup groups are vishyr10n, TechThoughts and BookReviews.
Ravi Sundararajan
Chief Revenue Officer
Ravi heads the Enterprise Business and all Sales, Marketing and Business Development activities at GupShup. His responsibilities include Mobile Advertising Sales to corporate, government and SME customers, Channel Sales, Product Marketing, Channel Marketing, Consumer Marketing, Branding, Corporate Communications, Telecom Carrier Relations and Enterprise Product Operations.
Prior to GupShup, Ravi was Founder and CEO of a cloud analytics startup, and also held various senior executive roles at Symantec including leading solutions development, product management, sales and marketing for Symantec's cloud data management and information security solutions. Before that he was General Manager of Enterprise Content Delivery and Cloud Services at Akamai, Vice President at Palm/Handspring (now HP) and Engagement Manager at McKinsey. He has been awarded US patents for innovative cloud data management inventions and is a frequent speaker at digital industry summits. He started his career at Sun Microsystems where he was a key member of design team that built Sun's first 64-bit server system Ultra-1 for the Internet data center and cloud computing market.
Ravi earned his MBA from Harvard Business School, and his MS in Electrical Engineering from State University of New York at Stony Brook. His GupShup group is GoEarth.
Amit Sahai Mathur
Chief Financial Officer
Amit heads the Finance, Legal & Secretarial Function at GupShup. He also is head of Human Resources at GupShup. Amit also leads GupShup's financial engagement with operators on various initiatives.
He brings with him around 20 years of rich work experience in the fields of Corporate Finance, Business Planning & Strategy, Capital Markets, Compliance & Financial Controls, Accounting, and Audit functions. He has worked across sectors as varied as Consulting, BFSI, Automobile, IT & ITES, in leadership positions with companies such as Fortis, American Express, Citigroup, Tata AIG, Daewoo Motors & CSC.
Amit is a Chartered Accountant and Company Secretary and holds an All India Merit in Cost Accountancy. He holds a B.Com (Honors) from Delhi University.
Advisors
Chirag Jain
Founding Executive and Advisor
Chirag is an advisor to GupShup on operator, regulator and industry body related issues. He previously played the roles of Vice President, Carrier Relations and Vice President, Business Development at GupShup. He was instrumental in getting the GupShup community off the ground in India, managed GupShup's brand solutions and also played a key role in defining various mobile marketing regulations.
Prior to GupShup, Chirag had nearly two decades of experience with both US and Indian companies. Prior to GupShup, Chirag was the Vice President and General Manager - India operations for a US based enterprise software company FirstRain Inc. For FirstRain Chirag first built the engineering and then the professional services organization to support an enviable list of Fortune 500 customers. He is currently Managing Director at another start-up.
Chirag is an alumnus of Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi.