Freshworks: India First SaaS Unicorn

 By Sonali Munda


About and The Founder’s of The Company:



Freshworks is a software-as-a-service (SaaS) providing company. It is basically an information technology or cloud computing company that was founded in 2010 by Girish Mathrubootham and Shan Krishnasamy. Its headquarters are situated in San Mateo, California. Its products are customer relationship management (CRM) and IT service management tools (ITSM tools) and it provides its services in “online office suite, online business management tools.


Founder’s Stake in The Company:

The founder, Girish Mathrubootham owns an 8.1% stake in the company and Accel Partners and the Sillicon Valley venture capital firm are the largest shareholders, holding a stake of 33% by the end of December 2021.

History of the Company and How it Achieved the Unicorn Status:

The founders, Girish Mathrubootham and Shan Krishnasamy began this startup with the initiative of creating a user-focused cloud-based customer service software. Initially, the startup started off with the name, “Freshdesk” and it got officially incorporated in 2010. In 2014, Freshdesk launched its second product namely, Freshservice. Freshdesk launched new social features in 2015 to enable businesses to provide better support on-the-go. By 2016, Freshdesk launched “Freshsales”, which was its third product. Later, this startup got rebranded as the name that we know today, i.e., “Freshworks” in 2017. With its headquarters in San Bruno, California, it has its global offices spread across India, the UK, Australia, and Germany. In 2019, Freshworks entered three Gartner Magic Quadrant Reports in the Customer Engagement Software segment, and for the third consecutive year, it featured at #40 on the Forbes Cloud 100 list. Even in 2020, during Covid-19, Freshworks got rated in the top 25 private cloud companies to work for and in 2021, it went public and opened up for its IPO to begin trading on the Nasdaq Global Select Market.

Despite, diversifying in a range of customer support and sales software including Freshdesk, Freshservice, Freshchat, and others, Freshwork's main focus was always on creating great products and placing emphasis on the customer experience. Apparently, it had not strayed from its core objectives which in 2018 made it the first ever SaaS company to enter the unicorn club of India. 

Current Market Capitalisation of The Company:

Currently, the market capitalisation of Freshworks is $3.90 billion.

Competitors of The Company:

                                                 

      Zendesk                                        Zoho                                          Salesforce

                                               

  Microsoft                                    ServiceNow                                       Oracle

                             

  SugarCRM                                     SAP


Investors and their Investments in the Company:


Date

Stage

Investment Amount

Investors/Shareholders

April 20, 2015

Series F Round

$55M

Sequoia Capital

November 1, 2016

Series F round

$55,000,000

Sequoia Capital

November 1, 2016

Series E Round

$50M

Tiger Global Managemen

July 2018

Series G round

$100,000,000

CapitalG and Sequoia Capital

November 4, 2019

Series H round

$150,000,000

Sequoia Capital

November 13, 2019

Series H funding round

$150 million

Sequoia Capital, CapitalG (formerly Google Capital) and Accel

January 1, 2020

Corporate funding round

$85,000,000

Steadview Capital

January 1, 2020

Secondary Market Round

$85M

Steadview Capital

September 22, 2021

Debut

$13 billion

Nasdaq



Acquisitions by The Company:

                                                   

   Konotor                                           Airwoot                                        Pipemonk

Acquired on Dec 16, 2015      Acquired on Apr 13, 2016            Acquired on Jan 4, 2017

  Amount undisclosed                 Amount undisclosed                   Amount undisclosed

                                                             

  Joe Hukum                                    Zarget                                               Natero

Acquired on Jul 20, 2017       Acquired on Aug 28, 2017          Acquired on May 21, 2019

Amount undisclosed                   Amount undisclosed                      Amount undisclosed

                                                             

  CanvasFlip                                  AnsweriQ                                              Flint

Acquired on Sep 17, 2019      Acquired on Feb 26, 2020          Acquired on Jul 9, 2020

 Amount undisclosed                  Amount undisclosed                 Amount undisclosed


Future of The Company:

Freshworks is growing at a larger pace than the market and delivering new products like Freshworks CRM for e-commerce. The recent optimism delivered by management about the year 2022 and the scalability of Freshworks is great reasons to research the business model.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Sri Lanka Crisis

Image
 What do we know about the situation?  The country's political crisis began on April 18th, 2016, when former Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa was accused of attempting to forcibly remove President Maithripala Sirisena from office. In protest, thousands of people took to the streets, calling for Rajapaksa's ouster. On May 29th, Rajapaksa resigned as prime minister, ending his controversial rule. Three days later, he was arrested at London's Heathrow Airport while traveling to Singapore. He was charged with violating the terms of his bail for his alleged involvement in a plot to assassinate his political opponent Gotabaya Rajapakse.  Rajapaksa's brother-in-law, Defense Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa, was appointed acting president until a newly elected government could be formed. However, he was not able to win an absolute majority in parliament due to opposition parties boycotting the vote. Following several failed attempts to form a coalition government, the speaker of th
Read more

Nambi narayanan Biography

Image
Who is Nambi Narayanan? Nambi Narayanan is an Indian scientist and aerospace engineer. As a senior officer of the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), he was in charge of the Cryogenic Division. In 1994, he was falsely blamed and arrested. Charges against him were dismissed by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in 1996, and the Supreme Court of India declared him innocent in 1998. In 2018, the Supreme Court, through a bench of Dipak Misra, awarded ₹50 lakh compensation to Narayanan to be recovered from the Kerala government within eight weeks, and the Supreme Court under the chairmanship of retired Supreme Court Justice DK Jain. Committee constituted.  Inquire into the role of Kerala Police officials in Narayanan's arrest. Early life and Birth of Nambi Narayanan Born on 12 December 1941, S. Nambi Narayanan hails from Tamil Nadu. He was born in Nagercoil in a Tamil family. Nambi Narayanan was born in a Hindu family. He lost his father when he was pursuing his graduation
Read more

Microsoft and it's Founder

Image
What is Microsoft? Microsoft is one of the largest and well known companies in the world. Microsoft is a very well known name in the field of computing. It is among the biggest software firms in the world.The largest product or software of Microsoft company is an operating system named "Windows operating system", which is used all over the world today. Microsoft's operating system revolutionized the world of personal computers. The headquarter of the company is located in Redmond, Washington, USA. Today, a large number of people reduce in Microsoft company, and this company has made a big name in the world of computing.Apart from the operating system, this company provides a wide variety of services and manufactures products. Some such other famous products or services of Microsoft are –      Office 365      Sql servers      visual studio      xbox games      Skype      Azure cloud platform      mobile phones Microsoft company was established on 4 April 1975. This company
Read more