Not many Indian startups have a global story to tell, but the cloud-based software company Freshworks with its roots in Chennai has evolved into a business valued at $3.7 billion with 12 global offices and a California-based headquarters in less than a decade. The company is now eyeing the 51 million-strong small and medium businesses (SMBs) in India to provide innovative customer engagement software to them.
According to Tejas Bhandarkar, Head of Product, Freshworks Platform, they started off with a focus on SMBs and startups and have not given up on them.
“The truth is that new technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) are not democratised yet and people with big resources and large teams of data scientists and engineers benefit the most from Cloud-based solutions. As a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) vendor, it is our job to empower companies of all sizes enjoy the benefits of an agile, scalable and seamless Cloud experience. We are here to democratise disruptive technologies for all, making it easy for teams to acquire, close and keep their customers for life,” Bhandarkar told IANS.
Founded in October 2010 in Chennai, Freshworks is backed by Accel, Tiger Global Management, CapitalG and Sequoia Capital India and employs over 2,500 people worldwide. The company’s cloud-based suite is widely used by over 150,000 businesses around the world including NHS, Honda, Rightmove, Hugo Boss, Citizens Advice, Toshiba and Cisco.
“We have a portfolio of 10 different products and all the infrastructure runs on Amazon Web Services (AWS). AWS has been a strong technology partner for us to help us scale our services and build a lot of interesting capabilities and features that are now deployed in data integration,” informed Bhandarkar.
The company — run by Founder and CEO Girish Mathrubootham with major technical and sales operations in Chennai, Bengaluru and Hyderabad — received series H funding of $150 million in November.
The Hyderabad office establishes a major product development centre for Freshworks, which immediately plans to scale operations and hire over a hundred engineers for the 15,000 sq ft office located in the financial district of Nanakramguda.
“The traction to move onto the Cloud is everywhere, not just in India. We are currently present in over 100 countries and are seeing a huge jump in our mid-market business,” said Bhandarkar.
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