Freshworks

Indian startup Freshworks (formerly known as Freshdesk) offers customer experience products and services (CX), IT service management (ITSM), customer relationship management (CRM), HR management, sales, and marketing automation solutions. By September 2021, Freshworks had served over 50,000 customers across 120 countries and its clients include Vice Media, Cisco Systems, Klarna, Pearson, and Delivery Hero.

Freshworks carried out a series of acquisitions over 2019–2020 to strengthen its product offering. In February 2020, Freshworks acquired AnsweriQ, a provider of intelligent automation for customer service. With the acquisition, Freshworks established a presence in Seattle, expanded its customer base, and boosted the capabilities of its AI engine “Freddy”. This transaction was followed by the acquisition of Singaporean-Indian firm Flint, a cloud management platform, in July 2020, to enhance Freshworks’ ITSM capabilities. In May 2019, the company acquired the customer management platform Natero to utilize Natero’s customer management data and analytics.

Freshworks reported a revenue of USD 169 million for 1H2021 (up 53% YoY), while losses narrowed 83% YoY to USD 8.9 million. 

In August 2021, Freshworks filed for a US listing, with plans to use the funds for general corporate purposes (such as working capital and capital expenditures) as well as to finance acquisitions. The company has set an IPO price range of USD 28 to USD 32 per share, which would raise a maximum of USD 912 million at the top end of the range. This implies a  valuation of approximately USD 9 billion. Freshworks was most recently valued at USD 3.5 billion (November 2019).