Freshworks third to get unicorn tag this year

BENGALURU: Software provider Freshworks has become the third Indian startup to enter the unicorn club this year after it raised $100 million at a valuation of more than a billion dollars from existing investors Sequoia Capital, Accel Partners and Capital G.

Chennai-based Freshworks, which has now raised $250 million since starting out in 2010, also named Suresh Seshadri, a former senior executive at Us-based software company Appdynamics, as its chief financial officer ahead of a potential public listing of its shares.

Freshworks valuation has roughly doubled to $1.3-1.4 billion in its latest funding round, a person familiar with the matter said.

Freshworks, which competes with companies such as Zendesk and behemoths like Salesforce Inc., last raised $55 million at a valuation of $700 million in late 2016.

The company will use the new capital to improve its Saas (software as a Service) platform and expand sales globally.

“With the addition of Suresh leading our financial management and strategy toward 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,” Freshworks chief executive Girish Mathrubootham said.

Freshworks, which provides Saas solutions for customer support, sales and marketing, is a pioneer in India.

Since starting out in October 2010, Freshworks has signed up more than 150,000 clients globally including Honda, Hugo Boss, Toshiba and Cisco.

“The business software landscape today is teeming with bloated, inflexible and expensive solutions,” said Sameer Gandhi, partner at Accel Partners US.