Chennai-founded and California-headquartered SaaS company Freshworks became the first Indian-origin SaaS company to list on the Nasdaq, and made over 500 of its employees crorepatis in the process, several of them under the age of 30. The company’s shares opened 21% above the initial offering price of $36, and at the close of Wednesday, September 22, had a market cap of over $13 billion.
Co-founder and CEO Girish Mathrubootham thanked employees, customers and others for believing in the dream after the company was listed on the US stock markets. “Today is a dream come true for me -- from humble beginnings in Trichy to ringing the bell at Nasdaq for the FreshWorks IPO. Thank you to our employees, customers, partners, and investors for believing in this dream,” he said.
Today is a dream come true for me - from humble beginnings in #Trichy to ringing the bell at @Nasdaq for the FreshWorks IPO. Thank you to our employees, customers, partners, and investors for believing in this dream. #Freshworks #IPO #NASDAQ pic.twitter.com/fXz73YxXXR
— Girish Mathrubootham (@mrgirish) September 22, 2021
He told the press that nearly 70 of the 500 crorepatis due to the listing are below the age of 30. “I believe that each of my employees has earned this,” he said. “Wealth has to be shared with the people who helped create it. It’s not only for founders and CEOs to enjoy," he said. According to the CEO, the company has over 4,300 employees globally, and 76% of them hold shares in the company.
"The number was higher, at 90%, but because we have been hiring so many people recently, it is 76%. For our employees in India, we have more than 500 crorepatis and 70 of them are under the age of 30,” he told Moneycontrol.
Girish termed it as a proud moment as Freshworks is the first SaaS company from India to go public in the US, and was happy about what it means for the industry in the country.
“When we started in Chennai in 2011, we didn’t dream of this…We have increased the audacity of our dreams over time,” he reportedly said during the press conference.
“We have a whole next set of entrepreneurs and founders who are building companies that are scaling nicely, and we all want to share this dream of India as a prospect nation, and I’m excited to see the next set of companies go public, and we want to see more global product companies from India,” he added.
He also added that the company has an advantage as it has access to talent across Chennai, Bengaluru and Hyderabad.”I think we clearly see that as a big advantage in R&D with access to high-quality talent, which we have been and we plan to continue to use to do that going forward.
Girish told the press that the company has reached a revenue scale of $300 million. “We are growing at a pretty healthy clip at more than 45%…We have more than 52,000 paying customers globally across 120-plus countries…more than 13,000 of those customers are paying us over USD 5,000 in annual recurring revenue,” he said. It had earlier said in its filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission that its customers include companies such as Byju's, Sotheby's, Cisco Systems, Dunzo, Delivery Hero, Lenskart and Radisson Hotels.
The company was valued at $3.5 billion when it raised $150 million funding from investors like Sequoia Capital, CapitalG and Accel in November 2019. The company is also backed by Steadview Capital and Tiger Global Management.
It plans to use the proceeds from the offering to acquire complementary businesses, products, services or technology. A part will also be used for general corporate purposes like working capital, operating expenses and capital expenditure.
Founded by Mathrubootham and Shan Krishnasamy as Freshdesk in 2010, the company started its journey as a helpdesk software for customer support. It decided to rebrand itself to Freshworks in June 2017 to incorporate the company's software suite.
With agency inputs