Freshworks acquires marketing software startup, Zarget

BENGALURU: Cloud-based business software provider Freshworks has acquired Zarget, a marketing software startup, in its ninth acquisition over the past two years.

Zarget's suite of conversion rate optimisation (CRO) tools helps marketers and designers understand how users interact with their websites.This acquisition will help Freshworks focus on building marketing solutions for businesses of all sizes.

Girish Mathrubootham, founder, Freshworks, and some of the early employees were angel investors in Zarget. These angels received only their initial investments back, without any additional financial returns to avoid any conflict of interest, as a part of the deal, according to the official statement from the company. "A growing number of our customers have been asking us to help them in marketing initiatives.

Today, our software powers customer engagement across every aspect of the customer journey - from acquisition to support. Acquiring Zarget will enable Freshworks to support customers with the preacquisition journey as well," said Mathrubootham.

Zarget helps businesses increase orders, customer interactions and signups on their website by providing user metrics and data driven insights with its CRO tools. Marketers can take informed decisions based on the insights gained through AB testing, heat maps, session recording, polls and feedback.

Through this acquisition, Freshworks seeks to further develop Zarget's marketing suite and provide the team with expertise, technology and operations as well as access to customers.

"We built Zarget to help marketers make informed decisions on their online properties without the need for deep technical resources or large budgets. Together with Freshworks, we expect to accelerate the digital marketing evolution and help our customers further transform the way they market with combined expertise and solutions," said Arvind Parthiban, CEO, Zarget.

Zarget was founded in 2015 by Arvind Parthiban, Naveen Venkat and Santosh Kumar with an angel investment from Mathrubootham and some other Freshdesk employees who were friends of the Zarget founders. Over the next two years, Zarget went on to raise $7.5 million in two rounds of funding from Accel Partners, Matrix Partners India and Sequoia Capital India.