The helpdesk Saas software maker Freshworks (earlier known as Freshdesk) on Thursday acquired Joe Hukum – a platform that helps enterprises to build their own chat bots. However, details of the accusation have not been made public. Joe Hukum has already gone public about the acquisition on its official website.
After this acquisition, Joe Hukum will dedicate all its energy in building chat bots for Freshworks that would align with its existing products. Freshworks is one of the few Indian startups that has been highly active in M&A (merger and acquisition) space. The latest acquisition is its eights acquisition in last two years.
Joe Hukum’s acquisition will apparently help the Chennai based Saas software company to make chat bot-powered solutions for all it clients. Joe Hukum was founded in July 2015 by three co-founders – Arihant Jain, Ajeet Kushwaha, & Rahul Agarwal – with an aim to build a superior technology around chat automation.
Freshworks splendid journey
It is for no reason that Freshworks has been so aggressive in M&A space for last two years. Its hunger for inorganic growth in a way reflect its spectacularly successful journey during the last six years. Founded in 2010 at a small apartment in Chennai, Freshworks grew in leaps and bounds and in no time emerged as the poster boy of the Indian SaaS startup. The startup counts big companies like Cisco and Honda among its clients.
Today Freshworks is the most funded Indian SaaS startup, and driving this meteoric rise has been the founder and talismanic CEO Girish Mathrubootham. It is Girish’s vision to revolutionize the traditional customer service through a could computing software that has been propelling Freshworks to impressive growth trajectory.
Today Freshworks valuation stands at approximately $750 million, following its most recent fund raising exercise in November last year. Going by the current valuation, this startup may be soon on its way to become the first unicorn Indian Saas startup. But crossing the $1 billion valuation is reportedly not high in Girish’s priority list. The charismatic CEO is believed to be more focussed on making Freshworks a truly established player in the global Saas ecosystem.
