We are living in a start-up ecosystem where even a small conference by some brands become news. However, amongst all this clutter, there is a company which keeps a low profile, keeps out of controversies and is only bound to grow in times to come. Today, we bring to you the journey and growth of Freshworks!
Freshworks is a SAAS company that makes it easy for customer support, sales and marketing professionals to communicate effectively with customers for better service and collaborate with team members to resolve customer issues. The Freshworks journey began for Girish Mathrubootham and Shan Krishnaswamy in October 2010 with a single product. Today, the firm offers an entire customer engagement suite.
The company under the umbrella name of “Freshworks” creates multiple business solutions. It has constantly introduced products to stay ahead as a leading SaaS company. These include:
- Freshdesk – Customer Support Software
- Freshsales – Sales CRM software
- Freshservice – IT Service Management
- Freshcaller – Call Centre Management
- Freshteam – Applicant Tracking
- Freshchat – Customer Messaging
- Freshmarketer – Conversion Optimization Suite
Unicorn Tag, Funding, and The Game of Profitability
Freshworks has so far raised $139 million from global investors such as Tiger Global, Accel, and Sequoia. Accel was the first major investor in Freshdesk (former name) when it infused 1 million Dollar into the startup. In 2018, Freshworks makes a massive jump in the big leagues. With an infusion from Sequoia and Accel partners, USD 100 million has been raised for the company. This has finally made the 8-year old company India’s next Unicorn start-up, as their evaluation reached USD 1.5 billion.
This Chennai-based Start-up is one of the first pure-play India-based Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) companies to bag the unicorn tag. On being a Unicorn, Girish, Co-founder and CEO, Freshworks, says: “Though it certainly is a significant milestone, it is also something that was bound to happen. Now that we are here, we see it as the beginning of another journey.” He adds that the firm is very focused on becoming an integrated customer engagement platform and continue worldwide expansion.
The nearly eight-year-old company boasts more than 150,000 businesses and organizations as clients worldwide, including Honda, Rightmove, Hugo Boss, NHS, Toshiba, and Cisco. The company previously told the news sources that close to 36 percent of its revenues come from its larger customers while the remaining come from small and medium businesses.
Girish Mathrubootham – Founder & CEO of Freshworks
Growth Metrics: Healthy Revenue Figures and Smart Acquisitions
Freshworks has crossed the $100-million mark in annual recurring revenue in June 2018, helped by growth in the company’s flagship customer support product – Freshdesk – and the growing revenues of its IT services management product, Freshservice, as well as its customer relationship management product, Freshsales.
Freshworks has made several technology acquisitions – nine in total – to further boost its product offerings. Several of these technologies were featured in its announced cloud bundle, Freshworks 360, which brings together sales, marketing, and support applications to provide users with a complete customer engagement experience. But that’s not all, The company’s CEO, Girish Mathrubootham stated that the company aims at growing 50-100% annually through various acquisitions and more aggressive funding rounds.
