Accel, Sequoia lead $100m round for US, India-based Freshworks
Freshworks, a cloud business software developer based in India and the US, has raised a $100 million funding round led by Accel Partners and Sequoia Capital.
CapitalG, the investment arm of Google’s parent company Alphabet, also participated in the round, according to a release. The company will use the new capital to support its worldwide expansion and make improvements to its platform. It also expects this to be its last private funding round.
Freshworks was founded in India in 2010 and has since relocated its headquarters to the US. It also has offices in the UK, Germany, and Australia. The company provides software to companies to help customer support, sales, and marketing professionals communicate more effectively with customers and team members. Its software-as-a-service (SaaS) products include Freshsales, Freshdesk, and Freshservice.
More than 150,000 organizations use Freshworks’ products worldwide, including Honda, Hugo Boss, Toshiba, and Cisco. The company claims to have $100 million in annual recurring revenue, a measure of the money that comes in each year for the life of a subscription or contract.
"The business software landscape today is teeming with bloated, inflexible and expensive solutions," said Sameer Gandhi, a partner at Accel. "Freshworks has built the only customer engagement platform on the market that elegantly meets the needs of a business of any size with software that is modern, intuitive and affordable.
Accel has supported Freshworks through all of its previous funding rounds, most recently a $55 million Series F investment in 2016 led by Sequoia. Tiger Global Management has also been a significant backer, having joined Accel in four funding rounds for Freshworks since 2012. Its most recent commitment was a $50 million Series E round in 2015, joined by Accel and CapitalG (then called Google Capital).
Last year Freshworks acquired Indian marketing software start-up Zarget for an undisclosed amount, with the intention of integrating the company’s customer interaction tool into its platform. The deal provided exits for Zarget’s VC backers Accel, Sequoia, and Matrix Partners India.
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