ET Entrepreneur of the Year 2021: Girish Mathrubootham - the man with a fresh approach to keeping both employees as well as customers happy

When Girish Mathrubootham rang the opening bell at Freshworks’ Nasdaq listing in September last year, it was a proud moment for his 11-year-old company. The company, which provides software solutions to over 50,000 businesses at 13 global locations, created history by becoming the first Indian SaaS (software-as-a-service) startup to be listed on the US exchange, a key reason why the ET Awards jury picked him as Entrepreneur of the Year 2021.

Mathrubootham attributed Freshworks’ success to employees at the company. “All the credit goes to my incredible Freshworks ‘kudumba’ (family) for all the hard work that has helped us get where we are today. The journey continues as we strive to build an iconic global product company out of India. I consider this an honour, a milestone in our dream of seeing India as a ‘product nation’ on the world stage,” he said.

Freshworks’ IPO has benefited two-thirds of its over 4,300 employees who had stock ownership plans. Mathrubootham has built Freshworks on the principle that “happy employees lead to happy customers.” When he founded Freshworks, the aim was to make sure employees could end up buying BMWs, Mathrubootham had told ET in 2015.


“Over 500 of our employees in India will be crorepatis, and 69 of them are under 30,” he said following the Nasdaq debut. Mathrubootham started Freshdesk as an alternative to the expensive help-desk software floated by American MNCs. Freshworks raised its first $1 million from Accel in December 2011. Seven years later, when it raised $100 million from Accel and Sequoia, it became India’s first VC-backed SaaS firm to turn a unicorn. Freshworks was adjudged Startup of the Year at the Economic Times Startup Awards in 2016. The company’s valuation jumped to $3.5 billion when it raised $150 million from Sequoia, CapitalG and Accel in November 2019. Upon listing in September last year, its market value touched $12.2 billion.