Enterprise software company Freshworks was in the news recently for its blockbuster IPO on the New York Stock Exchange that grossed the company $ 1 billion while turning 500 of its employees into overnight millionaires.

Girish Mathrubootham

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The idea behind the company’s success is Girish Mathrubootham – the founder and CEO of Freshworks and his journey began with humble roots.

I’m from Trichy

Rathnagirish Mathrubootham was born in March 1974 into a middle-class family. The son of a retired banker from the small town of Trichy, Tamil Nadu, Girish began his education at the Campion Anglo-Indian Higher Secondary School.

Coming from a broken family after his father divorced his mother when he was only 7 years old and remarried three years later left a strong emotional scar that made it difficult for him to understand relationships.

He later graduated from Shanmugha Arts, Science Technology and Research Academy with a degree in BE – Electrical and Electronics in 1996, followed by a Masters in Business Administration from the University of Madras, specializing in Marketing.

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Journey to his big breakthrough

Girish worked at a number of companies including HCL Cisco, eForce, AdventNetInc before eventually joining tech giant Zoho as Director and Vice President of Product Management.

While at Zoho, a comment on HackerNews inspired him to launch his own IT help desk product called Freshdesk in 2010 with colleague Shan Krishnasamy, based in a 700-foot warehouse in Chennai.

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Freshdesk to Freshworks

Freshdesk revolutionized the way customers interacted with companies through social media. Freshdesk offers companies the opportunity to process customer complaints through various channels so that they can quickly access information such as account details, subscriptions or payment information.

It took eight years for the company’s sales to reach $ 100 million. Shortly thereafter, in 2017, the company renamed Freshworks and set up its headquarters in California with global offices in India, Australia, Great Britain and Germany.

The company is now worth 95,000 billion rupees, or $ 13 billion, to over 50,000 customers around the world, including major brands like Hugo Boss, Honda, Toshiba, Cisco and others.

Girish Mathrubootham

Next chapter for Freshworks

In a blog post, Mathrubootham shared the vision for the company’s next chapter: “I am very proud that Freshworks is a pioneer in Indian entrepreneurship and our ability to combine the art of Indian design with the science of scaling in Silicon Valley.”

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He added, “We have had an incredible journey so far and have worked hard to build a company that is loved by employees and customers. It’s day zero again for Freshworks as we begin our public journey to build an iconic global software products company. “

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