Gupshup’s Beerud Sheth: From a ‘deep, dark tunnel’ to building two unicorns
Mint. Sheth can afford to say that. He has the distinction of scaling two unicorns—Elance (renamed as Upwork), and Gupshup—across two different geographies.
He cofounded Elance in the US in 1998 as a marketplace for gig workers. It eventually merged with a company called oDesk in 2013, renamed Upwork two years later, and then publicly listed on Nasdaq in 2018. Meanwhile, in 2004, Sheth co-founded enterprise messaging platform Gupshup, which hit a valuation of $1.4 billion in 2021 when it raised money in an investment round led by Tiger Global.
Sheth gave up a potential career in academics—he was pursuing a PhD at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology—to plunge into the unfamiliar world of entrepreneurship. “We all have the fear of the unknown. But if you really think about it analytically, what’s the worst that can happen? Let’s say I try something, maybe for a year, and it doesn’t work.
I’m still the same educated, qualified person. I could probably still end up getting the same or a similar job," Sheth said. “In some respects, I’ll be much wiser or mature or would have learned a lot, and probably might even get a better job because I have some entrepreneurial experience." Not that Sheth’s discounting the potential perils of entrepreneurship.
Sometimes it can be a long dark tunnel with no light, but there are upsides to it, he said. Sheth spoke with Mint for a new podcast series called Founder Diaries, where we take you through the entrepreneurial journeys of some of India’s most high-profile founders, and a peek into what it takes to build successful enterprises. Edited excerpts: I had a great academic career.
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