At first glance, Girish Mathrubootham doesn’t come across as a disruptor. Soft-spoken and grounded, he doesn’t fit the mold of the high-strung, hyper-aggressive Silicon Valley founder. But beneath the calm exterior lies one of India’s most successful tech entrepreneurs a man who took a simple support ticket problem and turned it into a billion-dollar SaaS giant that listed on the Nasdaq, becoming the first Indian B2B SaaS company to do so.
Freshworks formerly Freshdesk began with frustration, not ambition. Back in 2010, when Mathrubootham was working as a Vice President of Product Management at Zoho, he encountered a customer support nightmare. A friend in the US had a broken TV and a terrible experience trying to get it fixed. The forum where the complaint was posted got massive attention but the company had no meaningful tool to manage this inflow. That pain point struck a nerve.
“I saw how poor the customer support tools were,” Girish recalled in an old interview. “They were either too expensive or too complex for small and medium businesses. That’s where I saw the gap.”
What followed was the story many now recount with admiration: he resigned from Zoho, gathered a small team in Chennai, and started building Freshdesk a simple, affordable, and modern customer support software. The idea was to give businesses an alternative to the clunky, old-school systems that were dominating the market.
In 2011, Freshdesk got noticed in a big way. A Twitter feud with competitor Zendesk who accused them of unethical marketing tactics backfired spectacularly and gave Freshdesk global visibility. Sequoia Capital invested $1 million soon after, and there was no looking back.
While many startups chase markets and pivot multiple times to survive, Freshworks had a razor-sharp focus from the beginning: helping businesses serve their customers better through software that’s easy to use, quick to deploy, and fairly priced. What started as a helpdesk solution gradually evolved into a full-fledged customer and employee experience platform offering CRM, IT service management, chat, marketing automation, and more.
Girish’s vision was never just about software. It was about creating a truly global SaaS product from India without moving to Silicon Valley, without giving up the soul of the company. “We wanted to prove that you can build world-class software from Chennai, that you don’t have to be born in the Valley to build a global company,” he once said.
Freshworks’ decision to go public in 2021 was more than a financial milestone. It was symbolic the first Indian SaaS company to list on Nasdaq, with a valuation close to $13 billion on debut. For Girish, it was a moment to reflect on the decade-long journey from a small room in Chennai to the global investor stage. But what stood out most was his humility and clarity.
In his letter to shareholders during the IPO, Girish didn’t talk about market share or revenue graphs. He talked about values empathy, customer happiness, and the pride of building from India for the world.
Despite the scale, the vision hasn’t changed. Girish continues to advocate for product simplicity, employee wellbeing, and customer-first thinking. He’s often vocal about mental health, startup pressure, and sustainable growth a far cry from the “blitzscaling at all costs” approach adopted by many of Freshworks’ US-based competitors.
Zendesk, once a bitter rival, was later acquired by private equity firms after losing ground to players like Freshworks and Salesforce. While the markets fluctuate and investor moods swing, Freshworks has stayed on course, focusing on mid-market customers, innovating with AI tools (like Freddy AI), and continuing to grow both in India and the US.
Today, Girish has become a mentor and role model for countless Indian entrepreneurs. His success story is not built on unicorn fantasies or moonshot pitches but on strong fundamentals, humility, and belief in building real products for real problems.
If there’s one thing that sets Girish Mathrubootham apart, it’s this: he didn’t chase the American dream he made his own dream global.
