During the Covid-19 epidemic, which has seen SaaS IPOs in the US perform brilliantly the recent one being Freshworks IPO, producing billionaires overnight, the Nasdaq listing comes amid rising digitisation and growing acceptance of remote work.
When asked by a reporter, Freshworks founder and CEO Girish Mathrubootham a few months back if he, too, would give BMW bikes to hire programmers, as fintech BharatPe had announced amid the fierce competition for digital talent.
“No, we will equip them so that they can buy them on their own,” he responded, without hesitation.
With Freshworks IPO Nasdaq listing, Mathrubootham appears to have accomplished this. Not only has the great market debut enriched Mathrubootham and early investors like Accel and Sequoia Capital, but it has also made hundreds of Freshworks staff millionaires.
“Our employees are also our shareholders. This IPO has allowed me the opportunity to fulfil my responsibility as a CEO to early shareholders, both VC investors and employees, who believed in the dream of Freshworks. We needed all the trust and belief of the early employees and investors, who joined us and believed in the dream. As CEO, it is immensely fulfilling for me to finish my responsibility as I take on the new responsibility of public investors who have now invested in the future of Freshworks,” Mathrubootham said in an interview with Moneycontrol hours after ringing the Nasdaq bell.
Freshworks, a business software company, debuted on the Nasdaq on Wednesday at $43.5 per share, up 21% from its initial public offering price of $36 per share, giving it a market valuation of $12.3 billion.
Freshworks, the first Indian software-as-a-service company to go public on the New York Stock Exchange, Freshworks IPO was valued at $3.5 billion in November 2019 after it raised $150 million in funding from Sequoia Capital, CapitalG, and Accel.
“Seventy-six per cent of our employees hold shares. The number was higher, at 90 per cent, but because we have been hiring so many people recently, it is 76 per cent. For our employees in India, we have more than 500 crorepatis and 70 of them are under the age of 30. They passed out of college a few years ago and they fully deserve it,” he added.
“I feel like an Indian athlete who has won a gold medal at the Olympics. We are showing the world what a global product company from India can achieve. The fact that we are doing it first in the US markets is truly amazing. Today is day zero for Freshworks all over again and the beginning of so much more” Mathrubootham said during the bell ringing ceremony.
Freshworks intends to use the IPO proceeds for general company objectives such as working capital, operating expenses, and capital expenditures.
A portion of the net revenues may also be used to acquire related businesses, products, services, or technologies.
During the Covid-19 epidemic, which has seen SaaS IPOs in the US perform spectacularly, popping (increasing dramatically) and generating millionaires overnight, this public offering comes amid increased digitization and growing acceptance of remote work.
Snowflake, Zoom, Cloudflare, and Palantir’s IPOs have inspired a new wave of interest among venture capitalists, private equity firms, and hedge funds.
Freshworks was relaunched as Freshdesk in 2017 after being founded in 2010 by Mathrubootham and Shan Krishnasamy as Sequoia Capital, Freshdesk. Accel and Tiger Global are among the company’s investors.
Freshworks claims to have a customer base of over 52,500 people (as of August 31).
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