Insight
Gupta: Startups do not need VC backing to go public
“And it is not that you always need to be VC funded or a VC backed company to get listed or get that kind of support. If your fundamentals and if your conviction about your products are clear and you know what you're building, which has a value.”
Prediction Didn’t hold up
Gupta: Route Mobile will reach $1B revenue in 4-5 years
“If you say with current run rate, probably within four years down the line, I will have a billion dollar revenue or five years down the line. Because we are talking about the numbers which we have achieved year on year basis, and we have seen the growth. If yo…”
Assertion Supported
Gupta: Route Mobile stayed cash-rich without raising funds for 16-17 years
“We never risked funds, you know, till the time we went for IPO, almost 16, 17 years, you know, we were always cash rich”
Insight
Gupta: SMS Is an Impression, While RCS Is a Conversation
“When you say SMS, it's just like impression. The moment you talk about RCS is conversation”
Assertion Supported
Rajdip Gupta: Route Mobile reached ₹1,400 crore revenue last year
“No, no, it's a 1400 crore we have achieved last year. So we almost touched two hundred million dollar revenue last year. And the last quarter we did about Q one, we did about three 80 crore.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Gupta: Drew ₹12,000 salary for 10-12 years bootstrapping Route Mobile
“So almost 1012 years, you know, like I just took 12,000 rupees salary.”
Insight
Gupta: A founder's first target should solely be $1M revenue
“And I think I always believe that for any founder, the first dream should be the million dollar revenue. So rest is forget about it.”
Insight
Gupta: Route Mobile buys products to onboard enterprise clients faster
“If I can't build, I will buy. So that the entire journey of onboarding a customer for other services, I want to make sure it should be faster than we build.”
Assertion Supported
Gupta: Route Mobile works with nearly 30,000 customers globally
“I think we are working with almost 30,000 customers globally. We are working with almost 800 operator, plus two 60 operator as a direct partner.”
Assertion Supported
Route Mobile achieved over 30% YoY revenue growth for five years
“So, so that if you see our revenues, I think that we're showing the growth over a 30% year-on-year basis from the last five years, in fact.”
Assertion Partly supported
Rajdip Gupta: US customers generate about 40% of Route Mobile's revenue
“Maximum amount of revenue comes from a company based out of US, which is about 40% of the revenue. Then we have another market which is Africa, then Asia, then Middle East. Latim we are still building up, but we do have a very good interest in Latin America ma…”
Assertion Supported
Gupta: India's smartphone penetration is approximately 50%
“The smartphone penetration in India is about 50% now, which means that 50% audience within Indian ecosystem is still not using the smartphone.”
Assertion Supported
Gupta: Route Mobile generated ₹1 crore revenue in its first year
“So we generated a revenue of one crore year one which is a, you know, like a phenomenal for us to, you know, like to get a revenue of one crore.”
Assertion Supported
Gupta: Route Mobile employs over 400 people across core operations
“More than 400 people. That, that, that, that, that is only for my Root Mobile. We have another company like call to connect a BPO, where we have more than thousand people, then we have a firewall company, which is separate 25 people. So I think, but when you t…”
Assertion Not publicly verifiable
Route Mobile reached $1M revenue in its third year
“And I think year two, we reached to three and a half crore probably, and year three, we all reached hit one million dollar.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Gupta: Route Mobile spent 3.5 years onboarding Google as a client
“So I was working with Google almost seven years back, you know, like, and they say, I want to onboard Google as my customer. So it took almost three and a half years for me to onboard Google as a customer”
Assertion Supported
Gupta: Route Mobile doubled revenue from $100M to $200M in two years
“We have already achieved two hundred million dollars. Right. And from journey from a hundred million to two hundred million dollars is just two or three years, two years down line.”
Disclosure
Route Mobile Partners with WhatsApp to Offer Enterprise API Solutions
“Recently we launched the WhatsApp and the RCS API along the, and the Viber API as well. And now you get lots of QR code on your WhatsApp, you know, like, so we partner with WhatsApp to make sure we start building API solutions over WhatsApp API and we can star…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Rajdip Gupta spent four of 17 years traveling away from family
“I have just calculated the amount of travel I have done in 17 years, you know, like it's almost four years of that time I stayed away from my family.”
Disclosure
Gupta: Founded Route Mobile at 28 with a one-year deadline to succeed
“I told her very clearly, you know, we were just two years in our marriage and I said, listen, give me one year time. I told my family also. If I fail, I'm qualified to get a job. You know, so it's not that it is going to impact everything, but I want to try an…”
