SaaS startup Freshworks crosses $300M in ARR, business grows 40pc in 2020

Customer engagement software company Freshworks, Inc has announced that it surpassed $300 million in ARR, growing the business by 40 percent year-over-year despite the unprecedented economic times induced by COVID-19.

Freshworks’ record year featured new product offerings, strategic acquisitions to accelerate AI, and an expanded executive team to fuel its next phase of growth. Its next target is to achieve the billion-dollar revenue milestone.

“Like everyone, our 2020 plan went out the window when the pandemic hit, but our hard-working team persevered,” said Girish Mathrubootham, Freshworks Founder and CEO. 

“Our mission is to create customers for life and during this past year, this goal was put to the test. Our team rose to the challenge and rallied around our customers to help them navigate unknown waters and empower their employees to respond to increasing the customer demand," he added.

During 2020, Freshworks unveiled Freshworks CRM, a single platform solution that unifies the customer journey with out-of-the-box capabilities and delivers more personalised conversations at every customer touchpoint for improved business outcomes.

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The Freshworks CRM solution is built on Freshworks Neo, which aggregates data on an embedded customer data platform for personalised customer engagement, improving lead conversion and sales growth.

Neo eliminates the reliance on unwieldy tools and complex multi-stack point solutions that result in data silos that limit artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning’s (ML) usefulness, enabling businesses to quickly and easily craft and extend custom environments.

Sameer Gandhi, Partner at Accel, said,

“Freshworks delivers powerful, easy-to-use cloud-based solutions packaged in a flexible and affordable way, which is even more relevant in 2021 and beyond. As Freshworks' first investor, we admire their achievements not only for the past year but throughout their impressive 10-year history, during which they have consistently delivered tremendous value to their customers through an increasing array of inventive products.”

To fuel growth, the company acquired AnsweriQ, a provider of ML and AI for larger enterprises. AnsweriQ complements Freshworks’ AI engine, Freddy, by enabling enterprise organisations to use existing customer data to scale self-service experiences and automate complex customer workflows.

Freddy can now anticipate customer needs, make conversation-based agent recommendations, and perform tasks such as refunds and cancellations with no manual input.