Beerud Sheth

Beerud Sheth is the Co-founder and CEO of Gupshup, a Conversational AI unicorn with offices in US and India. He is a two-time entrepreneur and an IIT-B and MIT alumnus.

Founded in 2004 and incubated in IIT-B, Beerud has transformed Gupshup into a global leader in conversational engagement, with a strong AI-powered enterprise messaging platform. Gupshup’s vision is of a future where it’s as easy for a customer to chat with a business as it is with a friend. Primarily focused on mobile-first markets, Gupshup is helping businesses unlock the power of conversational messaging. The tech platform powers over 7 billion messages per month. Across verticals, thousands of large and small businesses use Gupshup to build conversational experiences across marketing, sales and support. He now believes a few years from now, we’ll wonder how anyone did business without conversational messaging.

Previously, Beerud was the co-founder of Elance (now Upwork), a listed company on Nasdaq focused on the gig economy. Elance was the quintessential poster boy of the gig economy (even before the phrase became popular), leveraging the internet to create a global services market, powered by skilled freelancers. Beerud played a critical role at Elance as its founder, CEO and top executive till 2004 and later as a board member until the merger in 2014. The company was listed on NASDAQ in 2018.