The latest funding round is expected to help the company enter the unicorn club of startups valued at $1 billion or more.
Cloud-based customer engagement software provider Freshworks may have entered the unicorn club as it bagged $100 million in fresh round of funding, co-led by Accel Partners and Sequoia Capital along with participation from CapitalG.
The company plans to use the funds for global expansion into US, Australia, New Zealand, EMEA, APAC and Europe markets. “The latest round of funding will help us go deep into these markets,” Girish Mathrubootham, the co-founder and CEO of Freshworks, said.
The company was valued at $700 million in its last funding round. The latest funding round is expected to help the company enter the unicorn club of startups valued at $1 billion or more.
The company will also continue to invest in its integrated software as a Service (SaaS) platform. “A couple of path-breaking products are in development, and news about them will be shared in due time,” a company spokesperson said.
Freshworkks, rebranded last year from Freshdesk, is one of the most well-funded SaaS platforms across the globe. Within eight years of its launch, the Chennai-based company has gone from offering a single product to challenging the giants of the sector such as Zoho and Salesforce, which has also got the company strong endorsement from its investors.
“The business software landscape today is teeming with bloated, inflexible and expensive solutions. Freshworks has built the only customer engagement platform in the market that elegantly meets the needs of a business of any size with software that is modern, intuitive and affordable. We’re confident that the Freshworks approach is the way forward for businesses seeking a better approach,” said Sameer Gandhi, a partner at Accel.
With the latest funding round, which is likely to be the company’s last, Freshworks has raised over $250 million worth capital to date. The company has also roped in former AppDynamics Vice President for Finance & Treasury Suresh Seshadri as the Chief Financial Officer.
“With the addition of Suresh and private funding round in place, we believe we have a unique opportunity to attract customers from around the globe who have been let down by legacy solutions,” Mathrubootham added.
Founded by Mathrubootham and Shan Krishnasamy in 2010, the cloud-based customer support software firm now has over 150,000 organisations across 126 countries using Freshworks, including NHS, Honda, Rightmove, Hugo Boss, Citizens Advice, Toshiba and Cisco. The company has also been an active buyer n the market, with nine acquisitions to date. “All our acquisitions have either been to bolster our team or fill a gap in technology.
Konotor became Freshchat, Zarget became Freshmarketer and we use JoeHukum’s AI/ML technologies extensively within our products. If there is an opportunity to expand our product portfolio or make use of the leadership to build something great we will definitely consider similar acquisitions,” the company said.
