SaaS Platform Freshworks Acquires Chatbot Startup Joe Hukum

Cloud-based business software Freshworks has acquired Joe Hukum, a platform that enables businesses to build their chatbots, based on logical workflows.

This is Freshworks’ eighth acquisition in about two years. In June 2017, Freshdesk rebranded to Freshworks. It announced the creation of Freshworks, a new umbrella brand that will bring together the company’s growing suite of business software.

Post-acquisition, the Joe Hukum team will be responsible for building bots on top of existing Freshworks products, enabling workflow automation for demand generation, knowledge management, and dynamic in-app self-service.

Chennai-based Freshdesk was launched in 2010 by Girish Mathrubootham and Shan Krishnasamy as a helpdesk software for customer support. The company’s cloud-based suite of SaaS products is widely used by over 100,000 customers in about 145 countries including Honda, Bridgestone, Hugo Boss, University of Pennsylvania, Toshiba, and Cisco.

Girish Mathrubootham, founder and CEO of Freshworks said, “We are seeing strong interest from our customers on how they want to leverage chatbots as they are looking for new ways to engage with customers on their web and mobile channels. As customer preferences shift from traditional phone tree based call centre support, chatbots offer a new support experience, while essentially solving the age old challenge of triaging customer inquiries and routing that to the right support agent. These are still early days for chatbots, but Joe Hukum’s innovative team and technology will help our clients better engage and support their customers.”

Gurugram-based Joe Hukum was founded in July 2015 by Arihant Jain, Ajeet Kushwaha, and Rahul Agarwal. It was formerly known as GoGetSpeedy. The founders were also a part of the founding team behind healthcare startups HealthKart and 1mg.

Commenting on the acquisition Arihant Jain, co-founder of Joe Hukum said, “As a founder, I could not have asked for a better outcome for Joe Hukum. Being a part of Freshworks is super exciting for all of us as it gives us a platform that provides us scale and reach and impact hundreds of thousands of customers.”

Joe Hukum is a chat-based order taking and fulfilment platform that helps customers do their routine tasks through a personalised chat on the app. Its technology automates sales, service, and support workflows, across various channels, and user interfaces.

In January 2017, Freshworks had acquired data integration platform Pipemonk, marking its seventh acquisition in the last 16 months. In November 2016 the Chennai-based SaaS startup also raised a $55 Mn Series F funding round led by Sequoia Capital India along with Accel Partners. Freshworks had earlier acquired Chatimity and Frilp, key acquisitions that are enhancing neuro-linguistic programming (NLP)-based artificial intelligence capabilities. Freshworks currently competes with global players like Zendesk and Salesforce.