ET Identifies Freshdesk as Startup of the Year


BENGALURU: Entrepreneurship is gaining momentum and its effects can be witnessed with growing number startups emerged out in past few years. Some of the startups hardly survive by competing with their rivals while some does wonder by being profitable. Similarly, EconomicTimes crowned ‘Freshdesk’ as startup of the year by considering its success in India as well as abroad. Other competitors of the company included Practo Technologies, Big Basket, Swiggy, and Byju’s—reports Economic Times.

Freshdesk has been able to expand its software solution business while being profitable within a small period of time, compared to other Indian startups. Headquartered in Chennai, the company is still imprinting its reputation in locations such as San Bruno, London, Sydney and Berlin. With its huge success, Freshdesk is considered as one of the competitors of global companies such as Zendesk and SalesForce. The enterprise has around 80,000 customers belonging to small and medium businesses (SMBs) whereas Freshdesk is also serving giants such as 3M, Sony Motion Pictures, Jaguar Land Rover, Cisco, and SolarCity.

Shanmugam Krishnasamy and Girish Mathrubootham are the Founders of Freshdesk to deliver faultless customer services with the help of latest technologies. “This is a great validation for Indian business-to-business startups. Usually, business-to-consumer startups command better brand awareness and recall given their higher ad spends in India. There is a tremendous opportunity for B2B (Software-as-a-Service) companies from India and I am sure that Freshdesk winning the ET Startup Award will inspire all B2B startups from India,” said Girish Mathrubootham, CEO, Freshdesk.

Freshdesk leverages customer relationship management by assisting customer support agents to help customers through mediums such as email, phone, and social media around the world. The software company is also planning to indulge into machine learning and artificial intelligence technologies and companies such as Tiger Global, Google Capital, and Accel Partners are helping Freshdesk with the initiative.

"The reason why SaaS has a big opportunity in India is because (enterprise software) companies in the US sell generally to large enterprises. In India, SaaS companies also cater to SMBs and Freshdesk is a great example of that," said ET Startup Awards jury Chairman, Nandan Nilekani, Co-founder, Infosys.

In 2015, Freshdesk acquired five companies to expand its business and in October the company also included LinkedIn India MD, Nishant Rao as COO. In November, Freshdesk was awarded with ‘The Billion Dollar Baby’ award by the Indus Entrepreneur.

"The startup ecosystem is entering a new innings. There is now a focus on viable unit economics, profitable growth and Freshdesk is an example of a company that is way ahead in terms of profits and revenue," said jury member, Rajan Anandan, MD, South East Asia and India, Google.

Read Also: Qdesq: A Workspace Aggregator Raises Angel Funding

India's Billion Dollar Startup Club