People with zeal and talent do not let any chance go waste. Something similar happened with Girish Mathrubootham when he read a comment on Hackers News which cribbed about Zendesk increasing its prices by 60%-300%. He knew that if there was a cheaper alternative, it would become a huge hit among businesses.
He was well-aware of the work that Zendesk did in the field of providing helpdesk software and his years of experience at Zoho gave him the confidence of launching his own company. But initial struggle of a few months awaited him.
The thought of diving into entrepreneurship was giving him sleepless nights and he couldn’t share the idea even with his wife. What Girish did instead was to spend hours reading online about the sector and then collaborated with his friends Shan Krishnasamy to give birth to Freshdesk which would allow clients to use software as a service (SaaS) to communicate with their customers.
After eight months of hardwork and fight for perfection, Freshdesk came up with their first product in 2011. Girish convinced his team to work for 40% of the market price as he knew money will not be an issue as they would go global right from the beginning.
As expected their first client was from Australia and they never had to look back. Numbers kept growing. The team got 100 customers in 100 days and 200 in 200 days. The product was intuitive and the clients would recommend other businesses to use Freshdesk.
I want all my employees to have BMWs – Girish
Another challenge that Girish demolished was choosing Chennai over Bengaluru as Freshdesk’s location and sticking to it. Initially, the investors or business associated would plan a visit but cancel it later because it did not seem feasible for them to come so far where nobody else was working in the software sector. But the scene changed as Freshdesk gained more and more traction with people buying their product from all around the world.
In six years, Freshdesk has grown at the breakneck speed, has won several awards, and boats over 50,000 clients spread over 145 countries making it the largest player in its space. The company has about 500 employees and offices in London, Sydney and Chennai. Major milestone was reached when Freshdesk became India’s first company to gather investment from Google Capital.
Another interesting thing about Girish is that he secretly draws inspiration from Superstar Rajnikanth. More than one wall in his office has Rajnikanth painted on it and it is a office tradition to catch the actor’s movies together.
In a very short span of time, Freshdesk has gained worldwide recognition and became a top player of its game. It is reportedly valued at $500 million. We salute this amazing venture for soaring high and setting an international benchmark.
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