LinkedIn India head gets startup bug, dumps cushy job to join Freshdesk

Freshdesk joins the growing line of well-funded Indian startups hiring top level global talent this year. This Chennai-based customer support software maker (now headquartered in Silicon Valley) today announced the appointment of LinkedIn India’s managing director Nishant Rao as its COO. The MBA grad from MIT was earlier with McKinsey.

Freshdesk is a poster child for a global tech product made in India. It has 50,000 enterprise clients around the world, including the likes of Honda, Hugo Boss, and Petronas, for its SaaS (software-as-a-service) product. This year, after Google Capital doubled down on its first investment in Freshdesk, it stepped up efforts to win the US market, which is home to its chief rival Zendesk.

Global talent of Nishant’s caliber becomes important in Freshdesk’s bid to out-compete rivals in the mature US market. “His expertise in scaling operations across global markets makes him an excellent addition to Freshdesk’s executive team.” says Girish Mathrubootham, CEO and founder of Freshdesk.

Nishant, who started his career as a co-founder of Epicenter Technologies, the first voice-based call center located in India, says he is excited to be going back to his “entrepreneurial roots” and helping make Freshdesk a “global powerhouse” as its COO.

Earlier this month, Bangalore-based technical talent hiring site HackerRank, which ranks programmers on their coding skills, hired Grady Burnett as its COO. This MBA from Harvard was vice-president for global sales at Facebook for six years. India’s ecommerce leaders Flipkart and Snapdeal too have been on the hunt for global talent to help them scale up and compete with their global rival Amazon.

See: Why Flipkart, Snapdeal, and Ola are hiring ‘Kenyans’ to run their race

What will the influx of top level global talent do for emerging startup ecosystems? Drop a comment below to let us know what you think.