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A joint study by Google and Accel India, earlier this year, states that Indian SaaS companies are expected to reach the $10 Bn revenue mark in 2025. It also counted over 500 SaaS startups in India who are collectively earning a revenue of $600 Mn annually.
Indian SaaS startup that provides a cloud-based customer support software, Freshdesk, has managed to become the first Indian startup to enter Gartner’s Magic Quadrant (MQ) for customer engagement.
The Gartner Magic Quadrant (MQ) is the brand name for a series of market research reports published by Gartner Inc. that aims to provide a qualitative analysis into a market and its direction, maturity and participants.
According to Gartner, “vendors’ positions in this Magic Quadrant reflect the growing demand for cloud-based customer service applications to support agents who engage with customers through multiple channels.”
Chennai and San-Francisco-based Freshdesk is a cloud-based customer support software startup. It was launched in 2010 by Girish Mathrubootham and Shan Krishnasamy to enable businesses of all sizes provide customer support across multiple channels like email, phone, chat, forums and social media. It provides the easiest way for teams to annotate and collaborate on images, documents & videos, and review them online. Freshdesk provides its services to over 70,000 companies worldwide including the likes of Honda, Toshiba, and Cisco.
In 2015, the company’s tools were used by a Republican Party committee in the US to create campaign posters, advertisements and slogans for an election. Also, software review platform G2 Crowd placed Freshdesk in the leaders’ box of its updated grid for help desk software.
The startup has raised a total investment to $94 Mn and counts Accel Partners, Tiger Global Management, and Google Capital as its investors.
Here Is A Look At All The Investments
April 2015: Raised $50 Mn in Series E round of funding led by Tiger Global, along with Accel Partners and Google Capital participating in the round
June 2014: Raised $31 Mn in Series D round of funding led by Tiger Global
November 2013: Raised $7 Mn in Series C funding round
April 2012: Raised 5 Mn in Series B funding round
March 2012: Raised $1.05 Mn in Seed funding
November 2011: Raised 1 Mn in venture funding
Acquisition Made By Freshdesk
February 2016: Aquired Pune-based Framebench, an online collaboration platform that enables teams to share, review and comment on videos, images, presentations and documents, for an undisclosed amount. With the acquisition, Freshdesk’s clients could use Framebench’s communication and feedback tools to seamlessly interact with their product teams as well as customers.
December 2015: Acquired Chennai-based in-app customer support startup Konotor for an undisclosed amount. The acquisition was aimed to help Freshdesk to serve an increasing number of mobile first businesses and to enhance its support channels and mobile solutions.
October 2015: Acquired a social recommendation app Frilp for exchanging references and recommendations for an undisclosed amount. The acquisition enabled Freshdesk to leverage Frilp’s technology and help customers to connect with friends on social networks who have the required knowledge and expertise.
August 2015: Acquired live video chat and co-browsing platform 1CLICK. The acquisition helped Freshdesk deepen its real-time chat support capabilities.
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