Freshworks surpasses $200 mn ARR in H1 on the back of customer support product

Chennai based software-as-a-service (SaaS) company Freshworks said it has doubled the annual revenue run rate (ARR) of its omnichannel customer support product in the first half (H1) of 2020, propelling the firm past the $200 million ARR milestone announced earlier this year.

The spike in demand and support requests from companies working in remote locations amid the Covid-19 pandemic supplemented the growth of Freshdesk Omnichannel, a product that combines customer support software with chat and telephony solutions, a statement said. 

“We continued to make progress in important areas. Our business has been resilient, showing growth across our chat, telephony and customer support products that strengthen customer communications — a lifeline during these unprecedented economic times,” Girish Mathrubootham, CEO of Freshworks, said. Mathrubootham founded the company, earlier known as Freshdesk, in 2010 with Shan Krishnasamy.

During the first six months of the year, the company appointed key executives, such as CFO Tyler Sloat, and entered into a strategic partnership with Tata Consultancy Services to build and market solutions for marketing, sales, support and IT solutions management for enterprises. 

Additionally, the Indian software product unicorn -- a term that describes private companies valued at $1 billion or higher -- provided small and mid-market enterprises free access to technology and expertise to help them tide over the global pandemic, the statement said. 

Businesses can use customer engagement tools, Freshchat and Freshcaller, to set up emergency hotlines for on-call services and to adapt their operations through the crisis, it said. A free version of the Freshchat platform would help them move customer service online and deal with surging ticket volume with remote or limited staff, it added.

In July, alternative investment firm Steadview Capital infused $85 million in Freshworks for a minority stake. Prior to that, Freshworks raised $150 million in November 2019, in a funding round led by returning investors Sequoia Capital, Accel and CapitalG, valuing the company at $3.5 billion, post money.

In 2020, it bought two companies -- Flint, an IT orchestration and cloud management platform, and AnsweriQ, a machine learning and artificial intelligence solution startup.