Freshworks Valued At $3.5 Bn After Latest Funding From Sequoia, Accel

Chennai-based software-as-a-service (SaaS) unicorn Freshworks has announced that it has signed an agreement for a $150 Mn Series H round led by Sequoia Capital, CapitalG, and the company’s first investor Accel. With this investment, the company’s valuation has reached $3.5 Bn, according to a press statement on November 13.

The financing is expected to close by the end of 2019, pending US antitrust regulatory clearance, since the company is registered in the US as well.

Freshworks said the funds would be utilised to create a more cohesive software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform for all key business verticals — marketing, sales, support and customer success. Through this “Customer-for-Life Cloud”, Freshwork aims to enhance the user experience.

With the Customer-for-Life Cloud, the organisation’s business teams will be better informed about the customers they’re serving. Freshworks believes that this will help the teams to be more proactive in terms of increasing customer satisfaction and lifetime value, in turn, helping the company to grow.

“The Customer-for-Life Cloud enables businesses to sharpen their customer understanding to better predict and enable success, displacing dismal legacy SaaS solutions that have over-promised and underdelivered with eye-popping regularity,” COE and cofounder of Freshworks Girish Mathrubootham, said.

In addition, the company will be using the funds to expand internationally as well. According to media reports, this funding is a pre-initial public offering (IPO) round. In July 2019, Freshworks was planning to go public by 2021. The listing is expected to be on New York-headquartered stock exchange, NASDAQ.

In a subsequent statement, Freshworks’ spokesperson told Inc42, “We are actively focusing on building the business, driving growth in new markets, and strengthening our position in existing markets. We will aim for an IPO if and when a public offering proves opportune for the business.”

Freshworks was founded as Freshdesk in 2010 by Mathrubootham and Shan Krishnasamy. Back then the company operated as a helpdesk software for customer support. In June 2017, it rebranded itself as Freshworks.

Freshworks claims to have over 150K clients across the world. Its clientele includes leading companies such as the NHS, Honda, Rightmove, Hugo Boss, Citizens Advice, Toshiba, and Cisco, among others.