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Maruti to Maybach

The Freshworks journey from zero to $100 million

Freshworks is the only home-grown Indian SaaS company to cross the $100 million ARR milestone. How did it get there? What does the future hold?

01/07/19

Sumanth Raghavendra

With a total funding of $250 million and a valuation of $1.5 billion, Freshworks became India’s first SaaS unicorn in August 2018

It expanded from a single help-desk product, Freshdesk, to a full suite of enterprise solutions

The company now services a clientele of over 150,000 businesses across more than 120 countries

How did it get so far so fast? And more importantly, can it now make it to its $1 billion dream?

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June 2011. I first saw Girish Mathrubootham* in June 2011 at a pitch competition in Bengaluru. Mathrubootham’s startup, Freshdesk, an online customer support service, was a fledgling entity with just six small customers, and at first glance, seemed unremarkable in every way. But Mathrubootham himself was remarkable—a master storyteller. Mathrubootham started his presentation by saying…

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