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 how he left his well-paying corporate job at Zoho and plunged into entrepreneurship despite having a family with two small kids to support. He spoke about how a casual comment on HackerNews had sparked off an urge to do something of his own.