Software company Freshworks on Wednesday made its debut on the Nasdaq stock exchange after a billion-dollar IPO, making it the first Indian SaaS company to list on the American bourse. Freshworks was founded in India in 2010 by Girish Mathrubootham and Shan Krishnasamy and moved to Silicon Valley to be closer to customers. Now based in San Mateo, California, the company retains a substantial workforce in Chennai.
Freshworks shares rose 32% after raising $1 billion in an initial public offering priced above a marketed range. Shares of the tech firm closed at $47.55 Wednesday in New York trading, giving it a market value of $13 billion.
"Today is a dream come true for me - from humble beginnings in #Trichy to ringing the bell at @Nasdaq for the FreshWorks IPO. Thank you to our employees, customers, partners, and investors for believing in this dream. #Freshworks #IPO #NASDAQ," Mathrubootham tweeted.
Thanks to the stellar debut of Freshworks, over 500 employees of Freshworks in India are now crorepatis and around 70 of them are under 30 years of age.
Freshworks has 4,300 employees globally and 76% of employees hold shares in the company.
Mathrubootham noted that the company -- which has raised funding from investors like Accel and Sequoia Capital -- has a unique strategic advantage with its access to top talent in India across Chennai, Bengaluru and Hyderabad.
"...We are growing at a pretty healthy clip at more than 45 per cent...We have more than 52,000 paying customers globally across 120-plus countries...more than 13,000 of those customers are paying us over USD 5,000 in annual recurring revenue," he said.
"What I am super happy about is what this means for India SaaS. We have a whole next set of entrepreneurs and founders who are building companies that are scaling nicely, and we all want to share this dream of India as a prospect nation, and I'm excited to see the next set of companies go public, and we want to see more global product companies from India," he said.
