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Freshworks Raises $100 Million and Rises to Unicorn Status

Freshworks can add a new title to its long list of accolades -- unicorn. Since its founding in 2010, the business has fast become a darling in the B2B SaaS space. By closing its most recent round of funding, it rises to a vaunted status with a $1.5 billion valuation that most Silicon Valley startups can only dream of.

The most recent round was a Series G investment of $100 million in capital co-led by Accel and Sequoia with help from additional investors including CapitalG. The company, which is headquartered in San Bruno, has raised $249 million to date and produces easy to use business efficiency software loaded with valuable extras.

Along with a plan to invest the additional capital in building out the software platform, Freshworks has also hired Suresh Seshadri as the company’s Chief Financial Officer. Seshadri helped prepare AppDynamics for its IPO before it was acquired by Cisco in 2017.

Freshworks was founded by CEO Girish Mathrubootham and CTO Shan Krishnasamy, who were inspired to create a better software solution after a bad experience navigating customer service to repair a broken TV.

The two met at another startup in their home country of India called Zoho, where Mathrubootham was Krishnasamy’s supervisor. Mathrubootham noticed his co-worker’s ambitions and felt he was the ideal candidate to co-lead a startup of his own.

Throughout it all, both Krishnasamy and Mathrubootham have remained relatively humble. To this day they are not enamored of elite applicants with stellar university credentials. For the two co-founders, passion counts much more than the degree someone got from a prestigious institution. They have noted in numerous interviews that they will hire and mentor any candidate they think will be a good fit for the company.

The company provides a suite of software solutions that is used by over 150,000 clients to date. Freshworks products include a customer support service, IT service management, sales CRM, applicant tracking, customer messaging and conversion optimization.

Freshworks has come a long way from the ten person company it used to be. The business has ballooned to a 975 person workforce with offices in Chennai, London, San Bruno, Berlin and Sydney. The latest round of funding ensures that it will continue to grow apace in the years to come.