Six months back, B2B SaaS vendor Freshworks, formerly known as Freshdesk, raised $100 million at a post-money valuation of $1.5 billion, marking its entry into the Billion Dollar Unicorn Club. It recently reported profitability in FY2017-2018 ending March 2018. Unlike most other unicorns, Freshworks has an eye on fundamentals, a byproduct, I should like to believe, of my badgering them for years. After my recent Bootstrapping to an Exit article, I have been analyzing the acquisition strategies of Indian companies like Zomato and CarDekho. Freshworks is a unicorn that has expanded its product portfolio with nine strategic acquisitions of capital-efficient startups. Freshworks' Journey Freshdesk was originally founded in 2010 as an affordable alternative to Zendesk by CEO Girish Mathrubootham and CTO Shan Krishnasamy. Today, with the help of nine small but strategic acquisitions, Freshdesk expanded its portfolio to offer IT services management software Freshservice, CRM software
If you haven't already, please study our free Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. I hope you read my article Bootstrapping to Exit. As a follow-up, here are some more case studies from 2019. From Freshworks Has Acquired Nine Capital Efficient Startups: All the nine acquisitions by Freshworks have been for undisclosed amounts. Cloud-based video collaboration platform 1CLICK, acquired in 2015, was founded in 2012 and had raised an undisclosed seed round from Blume Ventures and The Chennai Angels in 2014.Online social discovery platform Frilp, acquired in 2015, was founded in 2012 and had raised $500K in funding from angel investors, including Freshdesk CEO Girish Mathrubootham in August 2014 and an undisclosed venture round with Microsoft Accelerator. It had over 100K users. App customer support offering Konotor, acquired in 2015, was founded in 2013 and had raised $155,000 in seed capital from Accel Partners, Qualcomm Ventures, and Target Accelerator. Its
Zendesk pricing plans begin from just
$5 per user, per month for the Zendesk Support Essential tier – making Zendesk, on the surface, one of the best value CRM providers a small business could choose. But, prices rise depending on the features you want – pick a Suite of add-ons and you ll be looking at costs of
$89 per user, per month for Zendesk.
Though costs can rise depending on the options you re after, Zendesk is undoubtedly a great value CRM system. There s even a
In this guide to Zendesk pricing, we ll walk you through the various price plans for each tier of Zendesk, plus what features you ll get for your buck. We also compare Zendesk to other CRM providers to help you decide which is the best CRM for your business.