Freshworks is the latest name to make its way to the ‘soon to go public’ list, after the Salesforce rival revealed that it would be aiming for a valuation of nearly $9 billion in its IPO in the United States.
In a regulatory filing, it was revealed that the California-based firm, which was last valued at $3.5 billion in November 2019, plans to sell 28.5 million shares at a price range of $28 to $32, and should the start-up sell the shares at the top range, it will raise an astounding $912 million.
The eleven-year-old start-up, founded by Girish Mathrubootham and Shan Krishnasamy and launched from Chennai, counts prominent names like Accel, Sequoia Capital India, CapitalG, and Tiger Global Management as its investors and had raised its maiden round of funds in 2011.
According to Freshworks, the proceeds from the IPO would be utilized towards general corporate purposes, including working capital, operating expenses, and capital expenditures, and for funding acquisitions.
The firm is known to help businesses with customer management like a messaging platform and an artificial-intelligence-powered chatbot for customer support. Its suite of affordable, quick-to-implement business software tools ranges from CRM to help-desk software and has expanded its product offering in recent times. It has come a long way over the years and today serves over 50,000 customers in 120 countries, including prominent names like Delivery Hero SE, Vice Media, and Swedish payments firm Klarna.
In fact, it raised $169 million in revenue in the first half of the year already, an increase of $11 million during the same period in 2020, and $308 million in the last 12 months, a growth of 49%.
2021 has been the year of unforeseen growth in the business world, and many Indian startups have matured into full grown companies. This has led to a lot of startups announcing their IPOs, led by the example of Zomato, which had a stellar opening on the share market and smashed its way into the record books. Freshworks has the chance to benefit from this huge increase in demand, and the latest bump in business seen by companies going online. All we have to do now is wait and watch.
