How This Entrepreneur Built a $13 Billion Empire from a Small Town in Tamil Nadu
Born in Trichy, Built in the USA: The Story of India's First SaaS Firm!
Born in a middle-class family in Trichy in 1975 this entrepreneur built a 13 billion dollar valuation Empire at just 40 and became the first India-born SaaS firm to trade on a US exchange.
Yes! You read that right.
He is the son of a retired banker from the small town of Trichy in Tamil Nadu and rose over a typical middle-class background where success is measured by scores in school exams and a well-paying corporate job. His not-so-good score in the grade 12 and the entrance exam for engineering earned him scornful glances from family, relatives and neighbours.
On top of this, his parent went through a divorce, and it remains a defining moment in his life.
He was even criticized, saying he is only good enough to be a rickshaw puller!
He had his way of learning things, which was different from what one normally does in a classroom.
He had a few brief job stints, where he also learned Java. Soon, he began giving Java training to his friends as well.
It was this time around he began running an education institute offering Java training, but the venture didn't last long.
Soon, He joined HCL and moved to the US, where he stayed for a year. He returned to India to set up a training company in 2001.
In 1999, when he was teaching Java, it was all the rage — everyone wanted to learn it. But in 2000, the dot com bubble burst and he had to convince people why Java is still relevant.
So he shut the training institute and joined the Advent Net ( Now Zoho ) from 2001 to 2010.
But the burning desire to build a business and provide solutions was still bright.
He returned from the US in 2010, and while returning, he had a horrible customer service experience with a household goods company. Despite him calling them or emailing them, there was no response. Only when he lambasted them on Twitter, the company did the right thing. That's when he realized an opportunity existed to build a fresh helpdesk.
At the same time he was reading an article in the hacker news website saying that Zendesk raise their prices from 60 to 300% and how their customers where unhappy about it.
He saw a comment from the user megamark, which said that there is a huge potential for better and cheaper helpdesk products.
His spidey sense told him that this was the right thing to do!
The next few weeks were pretty stressful for him. He was unable to sleep because of the excitement and the fear. (school fees, home mortgage etc.)
The time had come when he needed a co-founder. He talked to his good friend and colleague of several years, Shan – who is a great techie, and he immediately agreed.
For a few weeks, they tried working weekends and nights but since both of them had families and kids it was obvious that they had to do this full-time if they were serious.
Both resigned in October 2010 and started a small team in a garage in Chennai with a team of six people – (3 developers, 1 UI/UX designer, 1 QA / Customer support engineer and him as – the Product Manager / CEO).
A blog-writing contest run by Appsumo worked in his favour. It required one to write a blog on lean startup. He wrote the Freshworks story, expounding how a simple comment on Hacker News motivated him to resign from his comfortable, well-paying job and launch his startup. While he didn't win the Appsumo contest his blog, which he had posted on Hacker News went viral.
His product was not ready, yet he earned 300 sign-ups. In his blog post, he thanked many people like Naval Ravikant, founder of Angel List and Venture Hacks. Ravikant, in turn, offered to introduce Girish to investors in India.
Girish posted on Angel List on Ravikant's advice. Anand Daniel of Accel Partners, who had seen the original blog post, also connected with Girish.
Around the same time, the team launched the product. Soon, they on-boarded their first customer from Australia, who didn't even speak to them and just became a customer after experiencing the product's trial version.
They got six more customers from four different continents but none from India — making them an international tech company from day one!
Cut to July 31 2018, the company turns a Unicorn Secures $100 million led by Accel and Sequoia, with participation from CapitalG.
Now you would have guessed the company’s name!
It's none other than Freshworks! And the master Mind Girish Mathrubootham!
Girish Mathrubootham is the star of the Indian startup scene, transforming the lives of hundreds of his Freshworks employees who are now crorepatis.
Freshworks' products are used by 52000+ customers across 120 countries around the world with more than 5400+ team members.
Today, Girish is a part of Chennai Angels and has made a lot of investments on his own. Girish has so far invested in more than 50 startups.
He is a vivid Sports enthusiast and started a Football club called FC Madras!
There is still so much Freshworks will do, and it remains to be seen.
PS: I have been part of Freshworks since Dec 4 2023, Joining as a specialist in the RevOps team!
It was my dream to join an organization at such scale and I am excited about the opportunities from the challenges!
Hey,
Each week, I write and send you a newsletter to bring you up to speed with the information I think you might find interesting.
Do you want me to write about you or an interesting story of yours? Or are there any particular stories you want me to cover?
Not only will your response give me great ideas, but it will also enable me to understand how we can improve the newsletter reading experience.
Just respond to this mail, and let me know :)- If you enjoyed reading this, please share it with your friends.
I want to grow this community as much as I can. (Psst, if you share it on LinkedIn or Twitter, do tag me so I can engage with you)- If this e-mail was forwarded to you and you liked what you read, you can subscribe to Weekly Writamins by AK by clicking here.
It’s free, and I send only one mail per week.- Most importantly, if WWAK didn’t land in your primary inbox, please move it from your social/promotions tab to your primary inbox so you never miss any of my emails.
See you next week,