Freshdesk raises $55 Million from Sequoia Capital India and Accel Partners

The Series F funding is to fuel growth of new products, global expansion

Cloud-based customer engagement software firm Freshdesk has raised Series F funding of $55 million led by Sequoia Capital India, a new investor for the company, and the existing investor, Accel Partners. With the latest round of funding, the total funds raised by the company so far is around $149 million.

The company has raised around $94 million through five rounds of funding, starting from $1 million in 2011 from Accel Partners to $50 million in Series E from Tiger Global, Google Capital and Accel Partners in April 2015.

The new round of funding is expected to fuel growth of new products and global expansion. The new round of funding will be used to invest in growing its new products launched earlier this year - Hotline and Freshsales - and scaling the existing products Freshdesk and Freshservice, apart from expanding its regional teams across the globe. 

Hotline.io, an in-app support and engagement platform for mobile-first businesses and Freshsales, a CRM solution and sales system for high-velocity sales teams are targeting to serve the mobile-first companies and sales teams. 

Since the last round of funding, the company has so far acquired six companies - 1Click, Frilp, Konotor, Framebench, Airwoot, and Chatimity - as part of enhancing its offerings in various platforms. 

The company has doubled its customer base to over 80,000 and opened a new office in Europe after the last round of fund raising in 2015.

“We met Freshdesk four years back when it was getting started and have been tracking their progress closely ever since”, said Mohit Bhatnagar, managing director, Sequoia Capital India. “They have a world-class product vision and Sequoia is delighted to partner with Girish and lead this growth capital round to help scale India's leading SaaS company,” he added.

“We are excited to have Sequoia Capital India as a new investor, the expertise and the excitement they bring will round out our already world-class team,” said Girish Mathrubootham, founder and CEO of Freshdesk. 

"We have been backing Freshdesk since our seed investment. We are excited about Freshdesk becoming one of the global iconic SaaS companies in the future," said Sameer Gandhi, Partner at Accel Partners.

Earlier this year, the company opened its fifth global office in Berlin, Germany and named Arun Mani as managing director for Freshdesk Continental Europe. Other than its headquarters in San Bruno, US, Freshdesk has global offices in United Kingdom, Australia, and India. It is planning to focus on expanding the regional teams to better service its global customer base, said the company.