Freshworks to raise up to $912 million from the IPO

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SaaS firm Freshworks, which competes with Salesforce, is looking to raise up to $912 million via its initial public offering (IPO), according to the US regulatory filing.

The company will sell 28.5 million of its Class A common stock between the price range of $28 to $32 per share, translating to $798 million- $912 million.

According to reports, this values the company at $9 billion.

The Freshworks IPO is one of the most anticipated in 2021, in what has been a record-breaking year in terms of funding for Indian startups, and is the latest example of the software as a service (SaaS) boom underway.

Over the last year, SaaS IPOs in the US have performed spectacularly, popping (rising sharply) and creating billionaires overnight. The listings of Snowflake, Zoom, Cloudflare, and Palantir — already large private companies becoming even larger public companies — have sparked a new wave of enthusiasm from venture capitalists, private equity funds, and hedge funds.

Freshworks said in its filing that it intends to use the net proceeds from this offering for general corporate purposes, including working capital, operating expenses, and capital expenditures. It may also use a portion of the net proceeds to acquire complementary businesses, products, services, or technologies.

Founded in 2010 by Girish Mathrubootham and Shan Kirshnasamy as Freshdesk in Chennai, Freshworks is backed by the likes of Accel, Sequoia Capital, and Tiger Global. It plans to list on Nasdaq under the symbol "FRSH". Girish Mathrubootham, and Eka Software founder Manav Garg recently launched Together, an $85 million venture capital fund that will back early-stage enterprise software startups.

In terms of financials, Freshworks has disclosed LTM (last twelve months) revenue of $308 million, a growth of 49 percent, and a net loss of $10 million. It says it has over 52,500 customers.