SaaS unicorn startup Freshworks has raised $85 million Series H funding round led by Steadview Capital Management, Sequoia Capital, CapitalG, and Accel, through a secondary transaction.
The transaction was closed in January 2020, two months after the unicorn raised $150 million at a valuation of $3.5 billion.
Freshworks earlier told that it would be using the freshly raised funding to create a more cohesive SaaS platform for all key business verticals, including, marketing, sales, support, and customer success.
The startup has also been planning to roll out its ‘Customer-for-Life Cloud’ to enhance their user experience. However, the company did not disclose how t will be utilizing the funding this time.
Freshworks’ plan to go public
Founded by Girish Mathrubootham and Shan Krishnasamy in 2010, the company was earlier founded as Freshdesk and operated as a helpdesk software for customer support.
It later rebranded itself as Freshworks in 2017 and currently claims to have over 150k clients from across the globe, including NHS, Honda, Rightmove, Hugo Boss, Citizens Advice, Toshiba, Cisco, and others.
In FY’19, the startup increased its net profit to Rs 30 crore from Rs 17 crore in 2018 while registering a 59% hike in revenue from the previous year.
The company targets to announce its IPO listing by 2021. Freshworks also acquired Seattle-based AI startup AnswerQ earlier, helping it create awareness regarding its brand in the US market.
Ravi Mehta, MD at Steadview Capital, told ET (1),
“We also view Covid-19 as an opportunity to back our companies more strongly. We have added to three of our portfolio companies recently – Nykaa, Chargebee, and Observe.ai. At the beginning of the year, we had made an investment in Freshworks. So, we have been fairly active through this period as well.”
This is Steadview Capital’s ninth investment in an Indian unicorn. It has earlier invested over $2 billion in Indian startups like Ola, Nykaa, and Lenskart.
