Freshdesk raises $31 million in private equity funding

(Reuters) - Indian online customer support platform Freshdesk has raised $31 million in a fresh round of funding from private equity firms Tiger Global, Accel Partners and Google Capital, the company said on Thursday.

Freshdesk, based in southern city of Chennai, was founded in October 2010, and provides a cloud-based customer support platform to companies. The start-up competes with the likes of U.S.-based Zendesk Inc, which went public in May.

Venture capital funding has long been a missing link for budding tech start-ups in India, but with the rising use of internet and cloud based services, Indian start-ups are finding it increasingly easy to service clients across the world.

"The world is truly flat now, so it does not matter the company is based. Freshdesk has a good product, which makes it a good investment for us," said Shekhar Kirani, partner at Accel Partners.

Freshdesk is planning an initial public offering in 2017, Girish Mathrubootham, chief executive and co-founder of Freshdesk told Reuters in a telephone interview.

"We were not looking for fresh funding till the end of this year but investors were willing to offer significant premiums, so we took it," he said.

(Reporting by Nivedita Bhattacharjee in Mumbai, editing by David Evans)