Starting on a Freshdesk

September 21, 2014 10:35 pm | Updated 10:35 pm IST

Girish Mathrubootham (left) and Shan Krishnaswamy

Girish Mathrubootham (left) and Shan Krishnaswamy

In 2010, Girish Mathrubootham read an article on how Zendesk’s customer support software has become expensive for smaller businesses. That set him thinking. Soon enough, he formed Freshdesk. Today, it provides virtual customer support software as a service.

Mr. Mathrubootham, who at that time was Vice-President of Product Management at the ManageEngine Division of Zoho Corporation, sensed an opportunity and began working on providing an affordable customer support software. He also managed to sell the idea to his colleague Shan Krishnaswamy, who was overseeing product architecture at ManageEngine.

Both quit their jobs, and thus was born Freshdesk in 2010. “Shan and I had mortgages. We were excited about the idea. We were also stressed about how we would make ends meet if we jump on the idea. We used our gut instincts and quit our jobs,” Girish Mathrubootham, Founder and CEO of Freshdesk, recalls.

He funded the company with money from personal savings. In addition, the founders raised $25,000 each from two friends as a convertible note with another $25,000 commitment along the way in July 2011. Freshdesk is headquartered in San Francisco, and has a development centre in Chennai. Lady Luck, too, smiled on them when Freshdesk won the $40,000 Microsoft Bizspark Start-up award in January 2011.

This acted as seed capital, and was used towards marketing adwords campaigns and for driving customer traction.

By early 2011, Freshdesk had a 6-member team, including the founders, working at 30-50 per cent of market salary with office at a suburb of Chennai. “My only question before hiring was how much money they needed to survive?” says the founder.

Within hundred days of its launch, Freshdesk reached a hundred customers. Atwell College of Australia was the first one.

David v Goliath moment In December 2011, Freshdesk came under public glare when Zendesk CEO termed Freshdesk as a `freaking rip off’. This lead to a public spat between the two firms — a David v Goliath moment! Mr. Mathrubootham took advantage of the running feud by creating a website to explain his stance and that grabbed customer attention.

Since launch, Freshdesk has helped companies support their customers with its cloud-based software which helps customer support representatives to view and respond to queries across multiple channels, including email, phone, online forums, live chat, and social media.

Despite competition from Zendesk, Desk.com (unit of Salesforce.com), and others, Freshdesk has built up a sizable customer base over the last three years. It now has 28,000 customers across the globe, up from 14,000 in December.

From Pearson Education to Goodreads and Hugo Boss, Freshdesk has a range of customers. It has Sony Pictures Entertainment, too, and many start-ups, small businesses and enterprises across the world. “We are adding 1,000 customers a month,” says Mr. Mathrubootham.

What makes Freshdesk stand out from rivals? Simple, he says. For one, Freshdesk helps in building communities out of customers. For another, it helps to break the monotony of customer support by issuing badges, trophies and awards to customer service executives (or agents) based on their interactions with customers through `gamification’ of customer service. For instance, an agent who answers a customer query correctly, and in the fastest time, may win a Speed Racer trophy.

Catching investor eye Venture capital firms have also taken note of Freshdesk’s story. In the three years since its inception, Freshdesk has raised substantial rounds of funding. In October 2011, the company raised $1 million in a Series A round from Accel Partners. In April 2012, Accel Partners stepped up again, teaming with Tiger Global Management, to offer Freshdesk $5 million in Series B funding. They once again pumped in $7 million in December 2013. Just over the year of fund raise, Freshdesk hit the 10,000-user mark.

The big endorsement, of course, came when, in June this year, Google Capital invested $31 million along with existing investors, marking Google Capital’s first investment in India.

“From six, to twenty, a little over hundred employees a year ago, to 250 now, the expansion has been crazy,” says Mr. Girish.

sanjay.v@thehindu.co.in

0 / 0
Sign in to unlock member-only benefits!
  • Access 10 free stories every month
  • Save stories to read later
  • Access to comment on every story
  • Sign-up/manage your newsletter subscriptions with a single click
  • Get notified by email for early access to discounts & offers on our products
Sign in

Comments

Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.

We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of The Hindu and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.