Conversational messaging platform Gupshup, has acquired conversational AI platform for banks and fintech companies Active.ai, and is planning for a pre-IPO funding of $100 million to $200 million or even larger, as per reports.

Beerud Sheth, co-founder and CEO, Gupshup, says, “mid-sized acquisition involved mostly cash. We wanted the founders of Active.AI and employees to continue.”

Founded in 2016 by Ravi Shankar, Shankar Narayanan and Parikshit Paspulati, Active.ai had raised funding from Kalaari Capital, Chiratae Ventures, Vertex Ventures, Creditease Holdings and Dream Incubator, among others.

Headquartered in Singapore, Active.ai serves banking, financial BFSI customers across 43 countries with a Conversational Banking as a Service (CBaaS) platform that helps clients engage with millions of consumers.

Sheth says, “Gupshup and Active.Ai have a very high customer overlap as a lot of our banking customers use Acitve.ai for developing chat bots and so on. So this acquisition accelerates our ability to do this specialised capability in the BFSI vertical which was part of our roadmap anyway."

This is Gupshup’s second acquisition in 2022. Earlier in February it acquired cloud telephony company Knowlarity Communications, which are backed by investors such as Sequoia Capital and Mayfield. In September last year, Gupshup bought New Jersey-based rich communications services (RCS) startup Dotgo.

Sheth says, “a couple of more acquisitions are in the pipeline without disclosing the details. Gupshup is in talks with potential investors to raise a pre-IPO funding round ahead of its US listing plans, which it has been vocal about for some time now. The IPO if we are lucky could happen by even later this year or next year. The company will start ‘figuring out’ bankers for the planned IPO by the middle of this year.”

“It would be nice to do another round of funding before an IPO. That would be sort of an opportunity rather than a need because unlike many other companies we continue to grow and are profitable,” adds Sheth.