Indian SaaS on fire: Freshdesk enters Gartner Magic Quadrant

Photo Credit: aPexels.

Helpdesk software maker Freshdesk today became the first Indian startup to enter Gartner’s Magic Quadrant (MQ) for customer engagement. MQ is a series of reports published by American research and advisory firm Gartner aimed to provide a qualitative analysis into a market and its direction, maturity, and participants.

Freshdesk is the only addition to the customer engagement MQ so far this year. According to Gartner, “vendors’ positions in this Magic Quadrant reflect the growing demand for cloud-­based customer service applications to support agents who engage with customers through multiple channels.”

Freshdesk has led the rise of SaaS (software-as-a-service) startups from India by taking on global rivals like Zendesk and coming out on top within five years of its founding. A year ago, software review platform G2 Crowd placed Freshdesk in the leaders’ box of its updated grid for help desk software. And a week ago, the startup’s new product called Freshservice was ranked number 1 in customer satisfaction by G2 Crowd.

More than 70,000 companies big and small worldwide, including the likes of Honda, Toshiba, and Cisco, are using Freshdesk multi-channel customer service products today.

“Freshdesk’s focus on ease ­of ­use which has driven our success at small and medium businesses is also fueling our growth in midmarket and enterprise,” president of Freshdesk Dilawar Syed said in a company statement issued today.

Freshdesk has also been making acquisitions to expand its ambit into social, mobile, and artificial intelligence technologies. In February, it launched an in-app messaging product called Hotline for mobile-first companies to offer real time support to customers.

Indian SaaS startups have been on a high growth trajectory since last year. A joint study by Google and Accel India counted over 500 SaaS startups in India, and pegged the current Indian SaaS industry at a US$600 million annual revenue mark.

See: 5 reasons why Indian SaaS startups will rock on the world stage

This is expected to hit US$2.5 billion by 2020, which would be 3.3 percent of the global SMB SaaS market. But by 2025, this will rise to US$10 billion as Indian SaaS startups scale up and corner 8 percent of the global revenue, according to the Google-Accel report.