Lessons from 50 start-ups: How Freshdesk is providing digital support for customer woes

Girish Mathrubootham and Shan Krishnasamy were senior executives at enterprise software maker Zoho when they spotted a gap to build a customer support platform.

The two founded Freshdesk in 2010 as a platform that integrates traditional support channels like phone and email with social channels like Twitter and Facebook.

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The software, which is delivered through the cloud, automatically converts a phone call, email and a customer mention on Twitter and Facebook into a 'ticket', which the company has to respond to.

Mathrubootham, who had a team of five within three months of founding, says the biggest challenge of starting up was the lack of quality infrastructure in Chennai, where the company is based, until they moved to a commercial office space.

The company launched its product commercially six months after the venture was founded and is targeting small and medium enterprises ( SMEs) to grow quickly. To make themselves more attractive to smaller firms, Freshdesk, like other cloudbased ventures, operates on a software-as-a-service (SaaS) model, in which customers pay only according to use.

In October last year, Accel Partners invested $1 million in the startup. Mathrubootham says the company had built up momentum by then as it had won a number of startup competitions, such as Microsoft BizSparks. They had also signed up a few paying customers. "So venture investors mostly approached us," he says.

Earlier this year, Tiger Global and Accel pumped in $5 million into the company. Apart from helping find investors for a second round of funding, the long list of e-commerce investments made by the two funds are also potential customers for Freshdesk with some introductions having already been made.

Mathrubootham says building the team is of utmost importance now and any challenge can be faced if the right person is handling the right responsibility. "If I have a Sachin Tendulkar, I will not tell him to improve his bowling. Identifying each member's core strengths is paramount."

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