From ashes to gold: The Indian startup that turned it around

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My fanaticism for the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks began largely out of chance – I just picked the highest-rated team on NBA Live 08, back when I knew next to nothing about basketball – but I grew to love the team for its underdog nature. It was good throughout the 2000s, but some bad luck and terrible refereeing meant that it never got over the hump to win the title – not ‘til 2011 anyway, and oh boy, is that a sweet memory. I dare say it’s probably the only title team that all neutral NBA followers remember fondly too.

Today’s premium story follows another underdog tale: An Indian startup that went from almost running out of cash to becoming a unicorn. Sounds like a phoenix to me – read on to find out how it did it.

Today, we look at:

• The fall and rise of Gupshup
• A “Super” startup receiving funding to help rural Indonesians get essentials at a cheaper price
• Other newsy highlights such as the continuing investigation into a Tesla crash in the US and the latest censorship concerns with Facebook

PREMIUM SUMMARY

Don’t call it a comeback

What do you do when your startup is almost out of cash? Well, in Gupshup founder Beerud Sheth’s case, the answer was to grit his teeth and make an uncomfortable – but necessary – pivot.

• A wrong first step: Gupshup started as a consumer-centric messaging platform, but inefficiencies in its business model soon led to a major cash flow problem – and an urgent need to change its fundamentals.
• Painful pivot: The shift to an enterprise-messaging business model required the company to lay off 17% of its workforce and forced C-level executives to take pay cuts of up to 15%.
• Tech is the key: Gupshup achieved profitability after doubling down on AI, chatbots, and automation to create solutions that fit its new enterprise-facing model.

Read more: How a drastic pivot saved one of India’s newest unicorns

PREMIUM SUMMARY

More help for rural Indonesians

Innovation: The key to the insurance industry’s survival