Freshworks becomes the first Indian SaaS company & the first unicorn to list on NASDAQ as it plans to raise ~$1 bn via an IPO at a market cap of $10.13 bn !!

It got such a huge response that the shares opened 21% above the initial offering price which valued the company at $12.2 bn.

From the middle of nowhere in Chennai to this, the 43 yr old founder, Girish Mathrubootham has come a long way from humble beginnings to ringing a bell with family in NASDAQ.

Unlike many other tech founders, he is not from IIT, IIM, or Ivy league. After his MBA from the University of Madras, he worked with Zoho and grew to become the vice president of product management.

The idea for Freshworks sprang in 2010 when Girish saw his LCD TV delivered in damaged condition.

When no one from LCD responded to his complaint, he wrote a long post online which made LCD revert to him.

Although the issue was settled, Girish realized that there is a gap in the customer service market that can be filled with #automation.

He left Zoho & teamed up his colleague Shan Krishnasamy to launch ‘Freshdesk’ in October 2010, which was changed to Freshworks in 2017.

Hiring for a brand new name in the #SaaS market was difficult and hence Girish’s idea was to get ppl like Ajinkya Rahane or KL Rahul if not Tendulkar.

He hired young, fresh out of the college talent and built his team, keeping the employee happiness as the top most value.

And today, over 500 of their staff have become crorepatis, of which 69 of them are under the age of 30!!

The SaaS market is expected to reach a valuation of ~$272 bn (out of which $194 bn constitutes of the Indian mkt) by the end of 2021 at a CAGR of 20.8%!!

The recent listings of other SaaS companies like Snowflake, Zoom, Cloudflare, Palantir have also brought in ‘fresh’ enthusiasm from VCs & PE funds in this space.