Comments on: SMSGupShup (India’s “Twitter”) Grows To 20 million Users, $150,000/month Revenue

By: smsgupshup | 420 Tricks

smsgupshup | 420 Tricks — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 18:10:37 +0000

[...] SMSGupShup (India’s “Twitter”) Grows To 20 million Users, $150000 … SMSGupShup, a Twitter-like service in India, is getting a ton of buzz over here in the US, too. In an interview with CEO … http://www.tech...0month-revenue/ – Cached – Similar [...]

By: BTCNEWS

BTCNEWS — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 06:12:36 +0000

sir/madam
iam BTCNEWS to sent ALL smsgupshup TO JOIN BTCNEWS. Plz sent This Message

By: Part 2: SMS GupShup CEO Beerud Sheth On Twitter, Carriers, Interconnect, Short Codes, API, Classifieds, M-Payments | MediaNama

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 01:30:33 +0000

[...] from one to many users, as well as many to many. GupShup has been compared to Twitter, and has claimed revenues of $150,000 per month. In Part 1 of this two part interview series, Beerud Sheth, CEO of SMS [...]

By: Part 1: SMS GupShup CEO Beerud Sheth On Revenue Streams, Users, DNC, Google SMS | MediaNama

Thu, 10 Sep 2009 05:29:15 +0000

[...] from one to many users, as well as many to many. GupShup has been compared to Twitter, and has claimed revenues of $150,000 per month. For a company like GupShup, the more successful it is in terms of messages [...]

By: Bhaveek Patel

Bhaveek Patel — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 12:32:18 +0000

I am very much thankful to SMSGupShup for creating a one of the best medium for all type of people, Like us.
We provide Stock Market tips on Group OURNIFTY
we have more than 2000 members and rapidly growing.
Our website: http://www.OurNifty.com is getting popular day by day.

Keep the good work going on SMSGupShup Team.

Regards,
Bhaveek Patel
(www.OurNifty.com)

By: MAHESHKUMAR

MAHESHKUMAR — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 04:59:48 +0000

I thank to all team members of Founders and Executive Persons working for http://www.smsgupshup.com .
I run a free sms-group in smsgupshup which will motivate creative thinking. Plz join it.

http://www.smsg.../HAPPY_LIFE_100

with regards,
MAHESHKUMAR

By: Internet Market Pie in India- Part 2 « In Search of Meaning

Internet Market Pie in India- Part 2 « In Search of Meaning — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 18:25:45 +0000

[...] about 20M users and $150,000 in revenue/month with over 90% of the users from India (as reported here). The semiconductor market from where I come, we report yearly CAGRs, but I guess, the game is [...]

By: Anurag Gupta

Anurag Gupta — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 03:19:21 +0000

Nice concept.

Few days ago, I came across BakBak – http://www.bakbak.in which is twitter like and aimed at microbloggers in India.

By: SMSGupshup: A Twitter like service in India for mobile phone users — Priyanka’s Blog

Sun, 28 Jun 2009 03:05:11 +0000

[...] In October 2008, the service had 12 million users and about 500 thousand communities. Last month, Michael Arrington on TechCrunch reported that the service has been adopted by 20 million users and has generated about $150,000 per [...]

By: P. Venkatraman

P. Venkatraman — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 10:00:35 +0000

Amol,
Glad you like SMSGupshup and I also wish that it had worked well for me.
But it did not, and I documented my user experience.

Does it work well for you?

Venkat

By: Tarun Dua

Tarun Dua — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 07:06:46 +0000

Venkat,

As a fellow user of service I appreciate you putting in so many words what were exactly my thoughts about why the service sucks. I would still give them benefit of doubt with regard to protecting the privacy of their users. Infact their idiotic implementation spurs from half baked attempts at creating private groups based on public groups (their freemium model) mixing it with thoughtless implementation for protecting privacy. They should infact listen to serious users like yourself.

-Tarun

By: amolpardeshi

amolpardeshi — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 15:28:34 +0000

i like smsgupshup,

By: P. Venkatraman

P. Venkatraman — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 17:24:30 +0000

I am quite surprised at the response, or rather the lack thereof, from SMSGupShup to my detailed posts regarding their quality of service.

This is especially more so, if you consider the fact that for the first post, they reacted promptly and responded. This proved that this board was being monitored by them.

But when I started narrating the issues in detail then all has suddenly gone quite.

Is this how they teach things at the PR schools these days? To keep quite, cover yourself under the blankets and hope no one will notice?

P. Venkatraman

By: » Indiens sms-svar på Twitter har nu 20 miljoner användare Pryl & Trend

» Indiens sms-svar på Twitter har nu 20 miljoner användare Pryl & Trend — Fri, 29 May 2009 12:39:06 +0000

[...] ut med alla sms om man har några hundra “vänner” som twittrar om sina kafferaster. [TechCrunch] Etiketter: indien • smsgupshup • twitter Publicerat 14:39 av OC | Permalänk [...]

By: All Eyes on India and SMSGupshup » MyClickSense.com

All Eyes on India and SMSGupshup » MyClickSense.com — Tue, 26 May 2009 11:09:27 +0000

[...] is “SMSGupshup” – the Indian SMS-based social network whose creator, Beerud Sheth, was interviewed last month by Michael Arrington of Techcrunch. The interview, which some TechCrunch readers cited the TechCrunch creator’s behavior as [...]

By: Hello

Hello — Thu, 21 May 2009 08:55:12 +0000

By: Girish

Girish — Wed, 20 May 2009 06:14:44 +0000

If they are doing 5% of total outbound traffic, they must be getting low single digit rate ( below 5p), as there are lot of vendors who are willing to do bulk push sms at rates close to 8p (for big enough volumes).
But I still can’t see them making money purely from advertising, its just not possible…… they have to find some way to get consumers/users to pay for the smses (sort of a fixed monthly charge, with unlimited smses). If the user is not willing to pay, it only means that the service is not compelling enough.
Eg. I would be willing to pay for gmail (as the product is compelling enough for me), but would not use a paid twitter (as the service is not compelling enough for me to pay for it).

By: Limespace

Limespace — Tue, 19 May 2009 19:03:12 +0000

They limit users to 3-4 smses a day. If users want to receive more smses, they need to pay. That’s how more money generates. so, Ads + Premium + a Shop = WIN

By: mmax

mmax — Tue, 19 May 2009 12:45:54 +0000

NICE

By: girish makwana

girish makwana — Sat, 16 May 2009 10:56:42 +0000

i love u

By: Pichumani Venkatraman

Fri, 15 May 2009 12:31:20 +0000

Is this Ok?

Many of you and most certainly the team at Gupshup monitoring this blog post would be wondering why I am going on.

To give a perspective of my background I run a business that employs 3000+ team members with 25 operational centers focusing on both domestic and international clientile. I normally would not even bother about deficient suppliers of services. Leave alone free suppliers. But the following incident that happened was the last straw on my back.

To go back a little…I sent out two test messages and they came out a cropper with error messages.

I would have kept quite at it, but my first SMS went out at 10:13 am on 9th May. And I got the error message.

Pretty soon I got the following SMS

” From: MD -Bulk SMS

We are Bulk SMS providers. Communicate at the speed of light in the most economical way. Promote your brand/product using SMS. Call for demo: 09810560054 ”

Too much of a co-incidence? I am trying to send out SMSes on Gupshup which fail and then shortly thereafter I get a pitch for using an alternative commercial provider.

Is my privacy and data being compromised?

I am not sure, though I am not inclined to give GupShup the benefit of doubt, looking at all the factors involved.

P. Venkatraman

By: Pichumani Venkatraman

Thu, 14 May 2009 07:09:22 +0000

Continuing…

After a day or two, I wanted to start sending out messages to my users. The first thing I needed to do was to find out the number on which to send it to. The number 567678 was hidden quite a few layers under the help section. Not very easy to find. One would expect this number to be right there in front for everyone to see and use.

The next issue that arose in my mind, is what if I am a member of more than one group? How does the service know which group I intend to have the message sent to? This question remains unanswered at this point of time. However since I am a member of only one group, the one that I created this issue is hypothetical for now.

I sent two messages to 567678 and both of them bounced back with the message,

” Invalid SMS greeting name. Please try again or go to smsgupshup.com/gallery from your PC to send more SMS greetings”

Did I mention that this happened twice. In short the service did not work as intended.

I then instructed one of my more eager members to send out an SMS from his mobile phone. He is only a member of our group TopGearMIG. And he got a response which read as under,

“Ur msg is posted to http://www.smsgupshup.com and is publicly visible. Ur SMSGupShup grp ‘U27776′ has been created. To rename grp. SMS to 567678: RENAME newgrpname.”

My friend Viswas just trying to send a message to the only group that he is a member of got this response. It seems he just went and set up a new group which he did not even intend to do.

In short not only is the UI faulty, the service sucks. Investors can be sure that they have sunk the money unless they seriously revamp operations.

Two years back it was the same…and two years later it is still the same.

It is one thing to develop a great product and then create a hype…but it is on the border of ‘fraud’ if you have a product that sucks and still go about creating a hype.

Haven’t we seen enough of this already?

P. Venkatraman

By: India’s Twitter, SMSGupshup’s sterling growth

India’s Twitter, SMSGupshup’s sterling growth — Wed, 13 May 2009 10:10:06 +0000

[...] SMSGupshup, the free SMS service, has been featured in TechCruch for it’s ‘to the moon – like’ growth trajectory. [...]

By: Pichumani Venkatraman

Tue, 12 May 2009 13:55:02 +0000

After admitting 25 members, I added another 10 on the understanding that they would have to respond to my invite and once they accept the invitation they would also be members of the group.

I went to the the group home page and found that it listed 34 members. 10 of them were displayed with the following comment “Displaying 10 members that you have invited. Members who joined this group by themselves are not shown for their privacy. If your group is private, no member will join your group.”

I have no idea why only 10 of the 34 are being displayed and I as the group moderator, cannnot even know who my members are.

Quite an quixotic User situation, most of you would agree.

I then found that if sent out messages from the web page it got delivered OK. One member then replied to the SMS and found that his message had gone to the others. But his personal phone number was displayed and not the group ID. I am not sure if this is how things are supposed to work.

By: Pankaj

Pankaj — Tue, 12 May 2009 07:28:08 +0000

I love smsgupshup. I run a free motivational sms-group in smsgupshup. Plz join it. It already have 6000 mmbers.

http://www.smsg...quotesnthoughts

with regards,
pankaj