CHENNAI: Cloud-based business software company Freshworks became the latest technology start-up to join the Unicorn Club after it secured $100 million worth of series-G funding lead by Accel Partners and Sequoia Capital with participation from Google’s venture capital arm CapitalG.
The Chennai-based company said that with the latest round of funding — which it refers to as the largest and probably the last it will secure — it has raised a total of $250 million and will use the funds to expand its footprint globally and further develop capabilities of its Software as a Service (SaaS) platform.
Freshworks, which has added clients including Hugo Boss, Honda, Toshiba and Cisco, said on Tuesday that it has hired former AppDynamics vice-president of finance & treasury Suresh Seshadri as its chief financial officer. “Freshworks has been riding an incredible wave of growth,” said Seshadri, who had earlier helped AppDynamics prepare for its IPO before it was acquired by Cisco in 2017.
“With the addition of Seshadri leading our financial management and strategy towards a path of free cash flow break-even and our latest — and likely last — private funding round in place, we believe we have a unique opportunity to attract customers from around the globe who have been let down by legacy solutions,” said Girish Mathrubootham, co-founder and CEO, Freshworks.
“When we started in 2010, we were a single-product company with a goal of offering better, easier-to-use customer service software than what was in the market. We’ve since scaled our company to $100 million in annual recurring revenue and built a full SaaS platform where all of our products work together seamlessly,” he added.