Freshworks may be the first cloud software company founded by an Indian foundation to go public in the United States on September 22, following a successful IPO on the Nasdaq stock exchange. The company’s stock, listed under the symbol FRSH, was 32% higher at $ 47.55 at the end of normal trading. The stock climbed to over $ 49 in after-hours trading.
The 11-year-old company, run by Indian entrepreneur Girish Mathrubootham, who is also its CEO, raises around $ 1 billion by selling 28.5 million shares plus a 2.85 million shoe option shares, for a total of about 10 percent. of its shares, at $ 36 each. At the closing price of $ 47.55, Freshworks will be valued at $ 14.9 billion.”It’s still leaking, (the idea of) a CEO of a public company, but one of my colleagues said to me ‘G, you look ready’, and I feel like I’m ready, “Mathrubootham told reporters on an online conference call after The listing Some Freshworks staff and guests, who were on the exchange floor for the usual ringing ceremony re-listed, carried flags of India, as shown in footage of the event posted on the Nasdaq website.
Mathrubootham was accompanied on the podium by his wife Shobha and their two children, as well as their two-year-old dog, a Shih Tzu, named Neo, after Neo “The Chosen One” in the Hollywood movie The Matrix. Freshworks, a San Mateo, Calif. Company with much of its work and personal development in Chennai, sells subscriptions to its software to enable businesses to manage customer service, internal IT inquiries, automation. of sales and marketing.
It is expanding its product line and has the ambition to compete with bigger rivals like Zendesk and Salesforce. With the IPO being a primary sale, Freshworks VC investors, including Accel and Sequoia Capital, would not sell for listing, but over time they could sell their shares or distribute them to their limited partners. , explained CFO Tyler Sloat. it will be fine, ”he said.
The IPO was also an opportunity to create wealth for Freshworks employees, Mathrubootham added. The company has approximately 4,400 employees and 76% of them own its shares. 500 employees became “crorepatis” (people with Rs 1 crore or more), and about 70 of them were under 30, he said.“And it’s well deserved,” he said, for their role in growing the business over the past 10 years.
