Over 500 Employees Of Chennai-Bound Freshworks Become Millionaires As Company Gets Listed On Nasdaq

Girish Mathrubootham, founder of Freshworks said that they hadn’t expected this when they started the company in Chennai in 2011

Freshworks.

Chennai: A customer service software maker Freshworks got listed on Nasdaq stock exchange on Wednesday. The company that was founded in Chennai and now headquartered in California, has raised more than $1 billion from the public and the markets value the company at more than $10 billion.

A report in Times of India, about 500 of the company’s employees had become millionaires in the process.

According to the report, the company’s stock traded at a high of $46.67 per share on Wednesday and it is 30% higher than the listing price of $36. The company’s IPO involves issue of 28.5 million shares and the IPO price was fixed above the expected price range of $32 to $34 per share that day.

Addressing a press conference, Girish Mathrubootham, founder of Freshworks said that they hadn’t expected this when they started the company in Chennai in 2011 but they had managed to increase the audacity of their dreams over a period of time. “I am excited about what this means for Indian SaaS and I believe we are going to see more global product companies from India after this,” he said. 

Pointing out that more than 76% of the employees hold the company’s shares, he said that more than 500 employees in India were crorepatis and 70 of them were aged below 30 years, as per the report.

The report said that the company wants to use the net proceeds from the offering for the purposes of general corporate like working capital, capex and to scout for inorganic opportunities and the dollar-based net revenue retention of Freshworks stands at 118%.

Pointing out that Accel was the first investor to support Freshworks, the report said that Tiger Global and Accel India own around 26% and 25% of the company’s share respectively. While VC firm Sequoia Capital owns about 12% of the company’s share, its founder and Google own about 7% and 8% of the shares respectively, according to the report.