SMS GupShup Secures $10Million In Funding Led By Tenaya Capital

Santa Clara, CA / Mumbai, India (August 25, 2011) SMS GupShup, India's largest social network and group messaging provider, announces today that they have raised $10million in funding. The company will use the funds to drive product innovation, increase sales and marketing, and expand globally. Tenaya Capitaljoins existing investors Globespan Capital Partners, Helion Ventures and Charles River Ventures in theSeries E round, taking the company's total fund raise to $47 million.

"SMS GupShup has cemented itself as the dominant social network in India, demonstrating that the company truly understands the Indian consumer and their needs. We are also very excited about the company's opportunity to leverage its innovative product offerings to expand beyond India into other high growth emerging markets" states Brian Paul, Managing Director at Tenaya Capital.

"SMS GupShup'sambitious vision has enabled them to build a massive user base, assemble a world-class team and emerge as a star in the social media universe," VenkyGanesan, managing director ofGlobespan Capital, added.

SMS GupShuppioneered social networkingin India and built its network on mobile messaging.Consumers use it to connect with their interests, while businesses use it to engage with their customers and employees. SMS GupShup derives revenues from its mobile marketing and mobile CRM solutionsfor large and small businesses. Recently, it unveiled group-messaging services with carriers across Asia.

"We never dreamed four years ago that we would become the leadingcommunication platform in the biggest democracy in the world,"said SMS GupShupco-founder and chief executive BeerudSheth."Our vision is to connect billions of mobile users worldwide through group messaging.Virtually anyone -whether a consumer, business, government agency or non-profit organization - can benefit from usingour platform."

SMS GupShup has also added Ravi Sundararajan as VP of Marketing and Samir Parekh as VP of Human Resource to its senior management team."The possibilities seems endless for a social networking platform that supports 50 million members, five million user-generated communities, 25,000 small businesses and 500 regional and international brands such as Nokia, Facebook, Pepsi and Sony" said Ravi Sundararajan. "SMS GupShup is in a great position to execute its aggressive market expansion strategy as it also has world class technology infrastructure that supports 12% of all mobile messaging in India"