SaaS startup Freshworks files for US IPO with losses shrinking

Bengaluru: Freshworks Inc. filed for an preliminary public providing within the US, contending that its customer-relations administration software program is offering a step in the direction of unified cloud companies.

In a submitting to the US Securities and Alternate Fee, the corporate listed the scale of the providing as $100 million, a placeholder that can change when phrases of the share sale are set. The potential competitor to the far bigger Salesforce.com Inc. was valued at $3.5 billion in a 2019 funding spherical.

Along with the IPO, Freshworks additionally has the choice of merger with a particular objective acquisition automobile or a direct itemizing, in addition to elevating extra capital from personal buyers.

Based by Girish Mathrubootham in Chennai a decade in the past, Freshworks rapidly emerged because the poster youngster of India’s software-as-a-service business that’s more and more serving world shoppers. The agency later moved to San Mateo, California, to service that rising enterprise.

The corporate, which now has 52,000 prospects, noticed its income develop within the first six months of 2021 to $169 million, up from $110 million a 12 months in the past. Its web loss shrank to $9.8 million from $57 million from a 12 months in the past, based on its submitting.

IPO prospectus

The corporate’s prospectus revealed that associates of buyers Accel and Tiger International personal over 25% of the corporate’s Class B shares, whereas Sequoia Capital owns just a little over 12% of the identical class of shares.

CEO Mathrubootham likened what the corporate is constructing to the Apple iPhone for enterprise software program, “mixing present know-how with unified, intuitive, and pleasant experiences,” he stated within the prospectus.

“Earlier than 2007, we have been all utilizing a number of units—I personally had a Nokia cellphone, a Garmin GPS, a Sandisk MP3 participant, and a Canon point-and-shoot digital camera,” Mathrubootham stated. “As customers, we have been fast to ditch our devices for a single product with a superior unified, intuitive, and pleasant expertise.”

The Freshworks IPO is being led by Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Financial institution of America Corp. firm is in search of to listing its shares on the Nasdaq International Choose Market beneath the image FRSH.