Left Zoho job, built Rs 30,000 crore ‘Freshworks’: How Girish Mathrubootham turned customer complaint into…

New business data points to the fact that Girish Mathrubootham's journey from Zoho executive to the founder of Freshworks began with an opportunity he spotted in an unlikely place: the comments section of Hacker News.

An engineer-turned-product executive, Mathrubootham had spent nearly a decade working across product and engineering roles, including at HCL, eFORCE, AdventNet and Zoho. At Zoho, where he joined in 2001 as a pre-sales engineer, he eventually became vice president of product management at its ManageEngine division.

Mathrubootham was working on on-premise helpdesk systems since 2004 and had experience across IT service management, customer backing and facilities helpdesks. He additionally had a front-row view of the shift towards cloud computing through his work at Zoho.

The trigger came while he was browsing Hacker News. He came across a discussion around Zendesk increasing prices by 60% to 300%, leaving some customers unhappy.

One comment caught his attention.

"That comment was like a slap on my face. Here was an opportunity sitting right in front of me," Mathrubootham wrote while recounting the firm's early days.

He saw an opening to build customer-backing software that was delivered as software-as-a-service (SaaS), rather than relying on expensive traditional systems.

The decision was not straightforward. Mathrubootham had a family, children in school and a home mortgage. He spent weeks researching the customer-backing software market before deciding to act.

He eventually approached Shan Krishnasamy, a colleague at Zoho, to join him as co-founder.

The two initially worked on the business during nights and weekends. But within weeks, they concluded that building the firm alongside their jobs would not be practical.

Both resigned in October 2010.

Freshdesk was rolled out on October 13, 2010, from Chennai. The initial team comprised six people, including three developers, a UI/UX designer, a QA/customer-backing engineer and Mathrubootham, who handled product management and the CEO role.

Even the firm's domain name required some persistence. Mathrubootham found that freshdesk.com was around to expire and placed a backorder for it before eventually acquiring the domain.

There were other early challenges. Since the founders could not find an Indian payment gateway that offered the recurring payment infrastructure they needed, they incorporated Freshdesk in the US while additionally registering an Indian entity for hiring and operations.

The firm initially focused on customer-backing software, but the business gradually expanded into other areas of enterprise software.

According to financial data available on Tracxn, Freshdesk boosted its first institutional funding in 2011, including a $1 million Series A led by Accel. This was followed by a $5 million Series B in 2012, a $7 million Series C in 2013 and larger rounds as the firm expanded its product portfolio.

Freshworks subsequently further noted products covering IT service management, customer relationship management, voice and human resources. The broader product portfolio eventually led to the firm adopting the Freshworks name.

The funding rounds additionally increased in size. Freshworks boosted $31 million in Series D in 2014, $50 million in Series E in 2015, $55 million in Series F in 2016 and $100 million in Series G in 2018. The firm became a unicorn following the 2018 round.

In November 2019, Freshworks boosted $150 million in a Series H round. It subsequently boosted another $85 million in July 2020, taking its private funding further before the public stock-exchange debut.

Freshworks went public on Nasdaq in September 2021. The firm boosted around $1.03 billion in its IPO, selling shares at $36 apiece.

The stock-exchange debut initially valued the firm at around $10 billion, while its shares closed the first trading day at $47.55, giving it a market value of roughly $13 billion at the time.

The valuation has since changed with the stock's performance. As of September 24, 2026, Freshworks had a market capitalisation of around $3.34 billion. At current exchange rates, that is broadly around the Rs 32,000-crore mark.

Freshworks has continued to operate as a global software firm, with its headquarters in San Mateo, California, while maintaining a large employee base in India.

For 2025, the firm noted topline of $838.8 million, up 16% from $720.4 million in 2024. It had approximately 4,500 employees as of December 31, 2025.

Mathrubootham's role has additionally changed since the IPO. He is no longer Freshworks' CEO; Dennis Woodside serves as CEO. Mathrubootham stays associated with the firm as its co-founder and has increasingly focused on investing and backing other SaaS businesses.