Google Capital doubles down on its first foreign investment – Freshdesk. Here’s why

Tiger Global, Accel Partners, and Google Capital have just pumped US$50 million in a fresh round of capital into customer support software-maker Freshdesk from India. This comes less than a year after it bagged US$31 million from the same investor trio.

But the latest series E round of funding is a tad sweeter because the Indian startup was in the enviable position of being chased by top VCs eager to invest instead of the other way round which is the norm. “We were not really raising another round of capital but there was so much interest from our existing investors that we decided to go for it. Another investor was keen to come in as well but we decided to go for an internal round,” Girish Mathrubootham, founder and CEO of Freshdesk, tells Tech in Asia over the phone from Chennai, where Freshdesk is based.

Mathrubootham was vice-president for product management at business software-maker Zoho, one of India’s early startup success stories. He struck out in 2010 to launch Freshdesk. Today, its flagship tool which helps companies to support customers through email, phone, websites, online forums, and social media is on par with global leaders in the space. In fact, leading software review platform G2 Crowd rated it a notch above its American counterpart Zendesk.

So far, Freshdesk has raised venture capital of US$94 million.

Google Capital mojo

Freshdesk was the first company outside the US to get backing from Google Capital, one of the two venture capital arms of the American search giant. While Google Ventures is more of an early stage investor, Google Capital focuses on the growth stage. So the doubling down on the Chennai-based startup recognizes that it’s on a fast track to scale up globally. “Freshdesk offers a compelling, modern customer experience delivered with cloud-scale cost and flexibility. We are excited to support Freshdesk with additional investment,” says Gene Frantz, general partner with Google Capital.

According to Mathrubootham, the association added to the Freshdesk mojo in more ways than one. On the marketing front, especially.

For example, after Google Capital came on board, an expert from Google India did an in-depth analysis that helped Freshdesk zero in on the geographies where there was high demand for its software. It threw up insights like where people were searching for Freshdesk software, how the overall market for customer support was evolving, and how Freshdesk’s marketing campaign was working in different markets. “It had county-by-county data for the US on how the Freshdesk brand was being perceived. It was brilliant. We were able to see where we were strong or weak and tweak our Google AdWords campaign to exploit it more,” Mathrubootham shares with Tech in Asia, adding that he is still working closely with Google on this.

In the last one year, Freshdesk doubled its customer base to 40,000. This includes small- and medium-sized companies (SMBs) as well as tech giants and large educational institutions. Honda, Hugo Boss, and University of Pennsylvania are examples.

There’s more to this Indian startup hero’s quick growth than tech wizardry. You can read all about that in part two of this story.