Freshworks, which rivals Salesforce.com, is aiming to raise $912 million in a U.S. initial public offering (IPO), according to a regulatory filing by the business and customer engagement software company on Monday.
The San Mateo, California-based Freshworks joins a slew of listings from the software and technology sector. Most such debuts have seen strong interest from market participants who expect the companies to benefit from the shift to hybrid work following the pandemic, Reuters reported.
Founded in 2010 by Girish Mathrubootham and Shan Krishnasamy, Freshworks was launched from the Indian city of Chennai. Freshworks raised its first round of funds in 2011 and in the same year it bagged its first customer – the Atwell College in Australia.
Venture capital firm Accel and New York-based technology investment giant Tiger Global Management were the early investors in the company.
Freshworks’s products help businesses with customer management like a messaging platform and an artificial-intelligence-powered chatbot for customer support.
Freshworks was valued at around $3.5 billion during its last funding round in November 2019. Sequoia Capital India and CapitalG are also its backers. Freshworks would be valued at nearly $9 billion depending on the success of the IPO.
Its technology is used by more than 50,000 companies in 120 countries, including high-profile names like Delivery Hero, Vice Media and Swedish payments firm Klarna.
