Case Study: Gupshup

Situation
Gupshup’s origin story begins with the firm Webaroo, founded in 2004 by Beerud Sheth. At the
time, Sheth was recognized across the tech industry as “The guy who started Elance!” But one
giant question remained unanswered:

What transformative concept was Sheth going to come up with next to disrupt a category and
change technology?

Since Sheth had been toiling in the Artificial Intelligence trenches for 20 years—going back to
his days at MIT—he had a reasonable amount of credence in the messaging space as
something of a thought leader. But RLM PR understood that he certainly deserved more credit:
Sheth at this point was a budding industry guru. Gupshup (which means “chit-chat” in Hindi)
was quickly rising as the leading global chatbot development platform, and Sheth was delivering
keynote presentations at tech symposiums the world over as an AI subject matter expert. Yet
the brand awareness was not there. Furthermore, it was in dire need of a partnership strategy
and a total embedded thought leadership campaign for Sheth.

Strategy
RLM PR leveraged the credibility of Sheth and Gupshup as the leader in the bot space—a pivot
towards educating reporters on this ever-growing capabilities. RLM PR initiated many
conversations by utilizing the ever-growing narrative around AI, and where Sheth could speak to
the high-profile topic in as many manners as possible.

Results
After arranging an extended series of desk-side media appointments between Sheth and an
array of marketing trades and business and technology media (Bloomberg, Wall Street Journal,
Fast Company, et al), we succeeded in securing expert commentary from Sheth into the media.
There, he had a platform to talk about Artificial Intelligence and chatbots, and with that he teed
up the story regarding the vision for Gupshup. RLM PR allowed these synergies (and levels of
expertise) to flourish, to the extent where Sheth is now the #1 trendspotter in the bot world.