Freshworks, the Chennai-based SaaS (software-as-a-service) unicorn startup, has raised a $150 million funding on Friday in a financing round from existing investors, including Google, Accel & Sequoia, bringing up the value of the company at $3.5 billion. The firm has also crossed its $200 million in annual recurring revenue, as told by CEO Girish Mathrubootham during the startup’s 9th-anniversary celebrations.
Before this funding round, the firm has raised $250 million by far from investors like Tiger Global & Sequoia. Sources aware of the matter said that the funding round was a pre-initial public offering round.
In July 2019, the company announced its plans to launch an IPO (Initial Public Offering) by 2021, the listing of which is expected to on the NYSE, NASDAQ. The same year the company said that it has about 35,000 paying customers, and its billings in the April-June quarter also grew by 69%.
Setting up a benchmark for IPO listing
The firm, founded by Mathrubootham & Shan Krishnasamyas in 2010, commenced as a helpdesk software for customer support and was later rebranded to Freshworks in June 2017. The firm claims to have over 150,000 clients across the globe that use Freshworks’ software product suites, including leading firms like Honda, Hugo Boss, Citizens Advice, Toshiba, and Cisco, among others.
The firm has also been working to build increased brand awareness in the US. The pre-initial IPO funding rounds would help evaluate Freshworks’ share value and set a benchmark for the same, according to reports.
Furthermore, a source added that the listing of B2B startups explains that investors believe that they can create high-value revenue that is recurring and more definite than consumer startups.
