The $85-million Together fund, launched by a group of SaaS founders last year, is seeing early traction in Web3 as well as crypto and is also seeing the emergence of new verticals, Freshworks CEO Girish Mathrubootham, one of the people behind the move, has said.
The seed fund was launched by Mathrubootham, Eka Software’s Manav Garg and former Matrix Partners Shubham Gupta and Avinash Raghava in July 2021 with the focus on finding and helping software-as-a-service (SaaS) startups.
“(For the Together fund) what we are seeing is new categories emerge and new vertical focus,” Mathrubootham said in a conversation with Rajan Anandan, Managing Director, Sequoia Capital, at the NASSCOM Technology and Leadership Forum 2022 on February 16. The leadership forum is a three-day event that ends February 18.
The company is seeing new verticals focused on customer relationship management for product-lead growth companies and an explosion of developer tools coming from Indian startups.
“We are seeing some early traction but very exciting traction on Web3 and crypto,” he said. Web3 is referred to as the next phase of the internet, a decentralised web-based on blockchain technology.
“So I think it's fair to say that this is going to be a decade for India as a product nation. There are always challenges like in any other industry. Back in 2010, my challenge when I was starting Freshworks in Chennai was we didn't have a good office space. I think we have come a long way from there.”
The key challenge facing the industry was the availability of experienced talent so that the startups could ramp up and scale, he said.
“We all know that India has a lot of youngsters and qualified engineers, but are they ready? And will we have (talents) enough on time? I think that is the biggest challenge.
“But that's a growth problem. Like we always used to say, a growing problem is always a good problem to have and I am an optimist, so I am super excited for this long-term story that's playing out,” Mathrubootham said.
He also touched upon the company's strategy to focus on clients in the matured market like the US and the importance of reaching $1 million revenue, even if it takes time. For Freshworks, the first 1 million took 18 months.
According to Mathrubootham, it was important to get the product and market fit right before scaling up.
“We launched our product in 2011 and we hired our first salesperson in Chennai in 2012. Our revenue doubled that month," he said.
Founded by Mathrubootham and Shan Krishnasamy in 2010, Freshworks became the first Indian SaaS firm to list on the US stock exchanges in September 2021.
The company competes with the likes of salesforce.com Inc and Zendesk Inc. The company made a dream debut on the NASDAQ but since the listing, the stock has fallen over 60 percent.
In a recent interaction with Moneycontrol, Mathrubootham said, “The stock market is something that cannot be controlled. I have always focused on things that you can control. So I am not looking at the price of my house every day when I wake up. Markets will go up, markets will go down, and eventually, over the long term, things will automatically self-correct. So that is how I view this.”
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