Freshworks started in a 700-square-foot warehouse in Chennai, India. Its founder, Girish Mathrubootham, had a bad customer service experience and decided to build a fresher help desk. Skeptics told him there were already 600 help desks on the market and that nobody could build a global software company from India. Freshworks priced its products low, let customers try them for free, and sold over the internet. By 2021 it sold software for support, IT, sales, and marketing to businesses around the world.

Six Hundred Help Desks

Mathrubootham and Shan Krishnasamy founded the company as Freshdesk in 2010. They aimed at small and midsize businesses that the big vendors ignored. Customers could sign up online and start in minutes, with little help from a salesperson. The company later added IT service, sales, and marketing tools and renamed itself Freshworks. It moved its headquarters to San Mateo, California, while much of its team stayed in Chennai.

Thirty-Six Dollars a Share

Freshworks priced its IPO at $36 a share on September 21, 2021, and began trading on Nasdaq as FRSH the next day. It was one of the first India-born software companies to list in the U.S. The shares rose on the first day, then sank in the 2022 sell-off of software stocks. Dennis Woodside became CEO in 2024, and Mathrubootham stayed on as executive chairman. Freshworks still trades on Nasdaq as FRSH.

Cover: Spring, Heinrich Vogeler. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for spring growth (a fresh start).