Girish Mathrubootham: Freshworks Founder Story

Key facts
Born	March 1975, Tiruchirappalli (Trichy), Tamil Nadu [17]
Family roots	Trichy, Tamil Nadu; father a Bank of India officer [20] [19]
Education	BE (electrical and electronics), Shanmugha college, Thanjavur (now SASTRA); MBA, University of Madras, 1996–98 [17] [16]
Family	Married, two sons [17]
Company	Founder of Freshworks Inc. (Nasdaq: FRSH), CEO 2010–2024, executive chairman until 1 December 2025; co-founder, Together Fund [1] [52] [57]
Wealth	Rs 1,900 crore, IIFL Wealth Hurun India Rich List 2022 (as of 30 August 2022); no later Hurun or Forbes figure found [13]
Known for	Building India’s first SaaS unicorn to list on Nasdaq, and making more than 500 Indian employees crorepatis on IPO day [38] [37]

On 22 September 2021, a software company born in a rented meeting room in Chennai began trading on the Nasdaq stock exchange in New York. Freshworks had priced its IPO at US$36 the night before, raising about US$1.03 billion [1]. The stock opened at US$43.50 and closed the day at US$47.55, valuing the company at around US$13 billion [35] [36]. “Today is a dream come true for me,” Girish Mathrubootham said, “from humble beginnings in Trichy to ringing the bell at Nasdaq” [38].

Back in Chennai, the numbers meant something more personal. Girish said more than 500 of the company’s India-based employees had become crorepatis on paper, about 70 of them under 30 [37]. He had once told his wife that he was not building the company to buy himself a BMW, but so that everyone in it could [36].

Eleven years earlier he had been a product executive at another Chennai software company, reading an internet message board. Nearly thirty years earlier, relatives had told him he was good for nothing better than pulling a rickshaw [18].

This is the story of how he built Freshworks, what it cost, where it stumbled, and what he has done since walking away from it.

Where it began

Rathnagirish Mathrubootham, known to everyone as Girish, was born in March 1975 in Tiruchirappalli, the temple town on the Kaveri that everyone in Tamil Nadu calls Trichy, according to a detailed 2017 profile by FactorDaily [17]. Later reports of his age match that year [18] [19]. Company filings sign his name as “Rathna Girish Mathrubootham” [9].

His father was a banker, a special officer at Bank of India [20], later described as a retired bank officer [19]. It was a middle-class home with a salaried man’s values: study hard, get a seat, get a job. Girish has said his childhood was hard in ways he only described fully in his 2025 memoir, All In, written with journalist Pankaj Mishra. “Normal people with a normal background, even with a difficult childhood, can actually win,” he told YourStory when the book came out [61].

He was not a star student. In 1992 his Class 12 and engineering entrance results were weak. “I have had relatives who have told me that I am only good enough to be a rickshaw puller,” he recalled in 2021 [18]. He did not get a merit seat in engineering and first enrolled in a B.Sc in chemistry [20]. His father wanted him to be an engineer, and found the money for a paid seat in electrical and electronics engineering at Shanmugha college in Thanjavur, the institution that became SASTRA. The fee was about Rs 75,000, a large sum for a bank officer in 1992. Accounts differ on how it was raised: FactorDaily says his father took a loan [17]; Inc42 says he borrowed from relatives [20].

Chennai, with no job

“On a hot summer day in 1996, I landed in Chennai as a freshly minted BE graduate who did not have a job,” Girish wrote in the local heritage journal Madras Musings in 2016 [16]. He shared a place with friends in West Mambalam, lived on Rs 1,500 a month sent by his father, and got into the MBA programme at the University of Madras from the wait-list. “I was number 3 on the wait-list in the Open Category quota,” he wrote [16]. He completed the MBA in 1998 [17].

His first real earnings came from teaching. He trained 25 programmers at Polaris in Java for 15 days and was paid Rs 30,000, of which he received Rs 28,500 after tax was deducted [16]. He has said that he turned down a job paying Rs 12,000 a month for a software role at Rs 5,000, because he wanted to stay in software [61].

In February 1999 he joined HCL-Cisco’s offshore centre in Chennai [17] [23]. Around 2000 he went to the United States on a consulting assignment. He has described buying “a one-way ticket” to San Francisco [16]; FactorDaily places him at a Texas company for about 13 months [17]. Business Insider India reported that he was earning US$85,000 a year by 2001 [19].

Then the dot-com bubble burst. Girish came home and tried his own business, a training company called MindSphere, backed by two friends. It shut in 2001 [17] [16]. He has described taking a job afterwards partly because that is what a young man in his situation was expected to do [16].

The first break

The job was at AdventNet, a Chennai software company that would later rename itself Zoho. He joined in July 2001 as a pre-sales engineer [16] [17]. AdventNet’s co-founder Kumar Vembu, brother of Sridhar Vembu, moved him into product management over a cup of tea. “I did not even know what the term product manager meant in 2001,” Girish said later [21]. He still calls Kumar Vembu his mentor; a chapter of his memoir is devoted to him [61].

AdventNet taught him the craft that would make Freshworks. The company sold software to businesses around the world over the internet, at low prices, from Chennai. In 2003 Girish opened a Google AdWords account with US$50. He says it took downloads of AdventNet’s on-premise products, which sold for US$795 and US$1,500, from about 100 a day to thousands [21]. From 2004 he built help-desk software for the ManageEngine division, four help desks in all by his count [14] [22]. He spent 2007 to 2009 in Austin, Texas, before moving back to Chennai [16] [24]. By the end he was Vice-President of Product Management at ManageEngine [14] [22].

The money was ordinary for most of those years. In 2005–06 he earned about Rs 40,000 a month and had a two-bedroom flat bought on a loan [19].

A broken TV and a message board

Two moments in 2009 and 2010 changed his course.

The first was a damaged television. When Girish shipped his household back from the US in 2009, his TV arrived broken. He spent about six months in a 28-email thread trying to get the insurance claim settled. When he finally posted the story on an online forum for people relocating from the US to India, the logistics company’s president apologised and the complaint was settled within a day [23] [24]. The lesson, which he has told “about a thousand times” [24], was that customers now had a public voice, and companies needed better tools to listen.

The second was a Hacker News thread. On 18 May 2010 a user posted “Zendesk raises their prices 60%-300%, users predictably revolt” [12]. The US help-desk company had raised its Regular plan from US$19 to US$29 per agent per month, and its Plus plan from US$39 to US$59 [26]. One commenter wrote that “there’s still a huge opening in this market for someone to come in and take all of ZenDesk and eSupport’s customers” [12]. Girish, who had spent six years building help desks, read it and felt “like a slap on my face” [14] [25].

He back-ordered the domain freshdesk.com on GoDaddy, which took almost a month to come through [14]. On 8 October 2010 he resigned from Zoho [17]. A week earlier he had watched the Rajinikanth film Enthiran on release [67].

Freshdesk is born

Freshworks dates its founding to 13 October 2010, “from a rented meeting room in Chennai” [15]. His co-founder was Shanmugam “Shan” Krishnasamy, a technical architect at Zoho who had worked under him for years. Shan had studied in a Tamil-medium school and trained as a mechanical engineer before teaching himself to code at 21 [68]. Girish was the product and front-end man; Shan was the technology and back-end man [68].

The money was Girish’s. Outlook Business reported that he put in about Rs 50 lakh of his savings [25]. The company burned about US$5,000 a month for six people. The staff took 30–50% of their market salaries plus stock options, and Girish took no salary at all [14]. The first office was a conference room rented from a friend’s company in Keelkattalai, on Chennai’s southern edge, for about US$160 a month [14] [22] [25]. The logo and website cost about US$450 [14]. Girish later called the Keelkattalai days “probably the best time of my life” [16].

There was a Plan B. If they could not ship within nine months, or the product did not earn US$20,000 in the nine months after that, they would shut down and Girish would take a job, bringing the team with him [30]. It was never needed.

Freshdesk launched on 7 June 2011 as a 30-day free trial [22]. Its first paying customer was Atwell College in Australia, which signed up on 10 June [22] [15]. “We got 100 customers in 100 days; 200 in 200,” Girish said in 2015 [22]. That same month Freshdesk won Microsoft’s BizSpark Startup Challenge and US$40,000, which went into digital marketing [25] [15].

Building the empire

The first cheques (2011–2012)

Freshdesk’s first institutional investor was Accel. The US$1 million Series A closed in October 2011 and was announced on 1 December, with Accel’s Shekhar Kirani joining the board [27] [25]. Freshdesk was then sold in more than 30 countries [27]. Monthly recurring revenue was about US$2,000. Asked by Kirani where it would be by the end of the next year, Girish said US$1 million, and “actually hit it one month late” [21].

The second round came through a handshake. In January 2012 Lee Fixel of Tiger Global visited Chennai and asked Accel for its best portfolio company. Freshdesk was then at about US$10,000 a month, which Girish has called “very, very small for anybody to put in any money” [29]. The founders met eight investors in a week, and five wanted in. Girish pitched Fixel in a hotel lobby on an iPad. Fixel called from the airport and offered to “shake hands in the air” without waiting for a term sheet. “I am just betting on you, since you have been there, done that,” Fixel told him [29]. Tiger Global led a US$5 million Series B with Accel, announced on 26 April 2012, when Freshdesk had over 700 customers in more than 50 countries [28].

“Once we had $5 million, it changed everything,” Girish said later. “We put everything in marketing” [22].

Taking on Zendesk from Chennai (2013–2017)

The strategy was simple to say and hard to do: build a product as good as the American leaders, sell it online to small and mid-sized businesses everywhere, price it lower, and win on customer delight. Freshdesk raised US$7 million in November 2013, US$31 million in June 2014 with Google Capital (now CapitalG) joining, US$50 million in April 2015 and US$55 million in November 2016 [31]. Reports differ on some of these rounds; MediaNama, for example, listed Google Capital rather than Sequoia in the 2015 round [77].

The money paid for expansion beyond the help desk. Freshdesk added Freshservice for IT teams, Freshsales for sales teams and Freshcaller for phone support, and bought a string of small Indian startups to get there faster. In July 2017 it acquired the chatbot startup Joe Hukum, its eighth acquisition in two years [34]. Pieces of three acquisitions (Konotor, Chatimity and Joe Hukum) became Freshchat in September 2017 [33].

On 7 June 2017 Freshdesk Inc. renamed itself Freshworks Inc. It said it then had more than 100,000 customers in 145 countries, headquarters in San Bruno, California, and offices in India, the UK, Australia and Germany [2]. “You can be successful in business without being a jerk,” Girish told YourStory that week [69].

Like many Indian SaaS founders, he moved the legal headquarters to the US, where most customers and investors were. The engineering heart stayed in Chennai.

Unicorn (2018–2020)

In July 2018 Freshworks raised US$100 million led by Sequoia and Accel, with CapitalG joining, at a valuation reported at US$1.5 billion. It became a unicorn. Girish said the company had crossed US$100 million in annual recurring revenue and 150,000 customers, and hired Suresh Seshadri from AppDynamics as chief financial officer [31].

Sixteen months later, in November 2019, existing investors Sequoia, CapitalG and Accel put in another US$150 million at US$3.5 billion [32]. By then Freshworks was headquartered in San Mateo, California, and had more than 2,500 employees [32]. It kept buying: Natero in 2019 and AnsweriQ, a Seattle AI startup, in February 2020 [76].

Girish built a culture that mixed Silicon Valley ambition with Tamil cinema. He is a devoted fan of Rajinikanth: “Whenever I look up, I look up to Thalaiva,” he said in 2018 [66]. Freshworks booked whole cinema halls for staff to watch Kabali and other Rajinikanth films, and in January 2017 Girish met the actor at his home, calling it the fulfilment of a lifelong wish [67]. When Freshworks filed for its IPO, the project was code-named “Project SuperStar”, and his note in the filing thanked Rajinikanth as his “maanaseega guru” [73].

The Nasdaq listing (2021)

Freshworks filed for its US IPO in August 2021. On 21 September it priced 28.5 million Class A shares at US$36, raising about US$1.026 billion. Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan and BofA Securities led the deal, and trading began on the Nasdaq Global Select Market on 22 September under the ticker FRSH [1] [74]. Shares jumped 32% on day one [35].

Freshworks was the first Indian SaaS unicorn to list on a US exchange [38]. Its 2020 revenue had been about US$250 million, with a net loss of US$57 million [36]. Forbes estimated Girish’s fortune at about US$700 million after the listing [36]. Accel’s early US$1 million, which bought about 23% of the company, was worth more than US$3 billion [36].

The listing was celebrated less for the founder’s wealth than for the employees’. Girish said 76% of more than 4,300 staff owned shares [37]. “I truly believe that wealth has to be shared with the people who created it,” he said [38]. Within weeks, more than 3,300 employees sold about 13.5 million shares worth roughly US$500 million, according to The CapTable; Girish trimmed his own stake from about 6% to 5.1% [39].

How the wealth is held

Girish’s fortune has always been mostly Freshworks stock. He has sold in stages, including about 2.5 million shares worth about US$40 million in December 2024 under a pre-arranged trading plan. The company said he then held about 4% and remained its largest individual shareholder [51]. Entrackr put his stake at 4.28% in September 2025 [53]. That makes his wealth hostage to the share price, which has swung hard, as the next section shows.

Growing up as a public company (2022–2025)

Freshworks kept growing after the IPO, but more slowly. Revenue was US$371.0 million in 2021, up 49% [5]; US$596.4 million in 2023 [6]; US$720.4 million in 2024 [3]; and US$838.8 million in 2025, up 16% [3]. For most of those years it made GAAP operating losses, much of it from stock-based pay: US$204.8 million in 2021 [5], narrowing to US$170.2 million in 2023 [6].

Girish handed over the CEO’s job in stages. In 2022 he hired Dennis Woodside, a former Dropbox chief operating officer and Motorola Mobility CEO, as president. On 1 May 2024 Woodside became CEO and Girish became executive chairman [46] [75]. “When I recruited Dennis to Freshworks, my hope was that he would eventually succeed me,” Girish said [47]. The same week Freshworks agreed to buy Device42, an IT asset-management company, for a price TechCrunch reported at US$230 million; the deal closed in June 2024 [48].

In 2025 the company turned the corner on profits. It reported GAAP operating income of US$13.2 million for the year and GAAP net income of US$183.7 million, the latter boosted by a one-time tax benefit of about US$151.7 million [3]. Its Freddy AI products passed US$25 million in annual recurring revenue [3]. In the second quarter of 2026, the latest reported before this profile, revenue was US$237.4 million, up 16%, and the company guided for full-year 2026 revenue of about US$964–967 million [4].

By then Girish was gone. On 3 September 2025 Freshworks told regulators that he would step down as executive chairman and leave the board effective 1 December 2025, a decision the company said was “not the result of any disagreement”. Lead independent director Roxanne Austin became chair [52] [53]. “After 15 years, I’m stepping down as Executive Chairman of Freshworks,” Girish wrote. “What started in Chennai grew into a global SaaS company on Nasdaq — thanks to an amazing team & customers” [52].

The setbacks and failures

Early failures

Before Freshdesk, Girish missed a merit engineering seat, came home from America when the dot-com bubble burst, and closed his first company, MindSphere, in 2001 [17] [16]. Inc42 reported him saying he had started “several companies that did not succeed” [20].

The share-price slide

The IPO was the high point for Freshworks’ shareholders. The stock hit an intraday record of US$53.36 within weeks of listing [41]. By November 2022 it had touched US$10.51, more than 70% below the IPO price, as growth slowed and technology stocks fell worldwide [40]. Orios Venture Partners’ Rehan Yar Khan called it “a cautionary tale” for Indian founders thinking of listing in the US [72].

The slide did not stop there. When the company cut its 2024 forecast alongside the CEO change in May 2024, shares fell about 20% [47]. In February 2026, after weak guidance and wider fears that AI would hurt software companies, the stock fell to an intraday record low of US$7.00, about 85% below its closing high [56].

A pay package cancelled

In 2021 the board had given Girish a performance award of 6 million restricted stock units that would vest only if the share price hit high targets. In February 2024 the board cancelled it, saying the targets were too far above the current price, and replaced it with a smaller annual award worth about US$19 million [45].

Layoffs

Freshworks, which had prided itself on how it treated staff, cut jobs repeatedly once growth slowed. It laid off about 90 people in December 2022 and more in 2023 [71]. In November 2024, under CEO Woodside, it cut about 660 jobs, roughly 13% of its workforce, while announcing a US$400 million share buyback [49] [7]. In May 2026 it cut about 500 more jobs, about 11% [55].

Products and people

His co-founder Shan Krishnasamy left in late 2022 [71]. Freshteam, an HR product, was folded into Freshservice and is being wound down, with renewals ending from March 2026 [70].

Controversies and allegations

Zoho’s trade-secrets lawsuit (2020–2021)

Allegation: In March 2020 Zoho, where both Freshworks founders had worked until 2010, sued Freshworks in the US District Court for the Northern District of California. YourStory reported that Girish and Shan Krishnasamy were named as defendants alongside the company [42]. Zoho alleged violations of US and California trade-secrets laws, interference with its business and unjust enrichment. The complaint alleged, among other things, that Girish improperly included Zoho’s confidential revenue figures in early Freshworks investor pitch materials, that Freshworks recruited more than 100 Zoho staff, and that Freshworks accessed Zoho customer data as recently as February 2020 [42] [43]. Zoho said publicly that “compelling evidence has emerged that Freshworks has stolen customer data from Zoho” [43].

Response: “Freshworks is taking these allegations seriously. We plan on defending the case vigorously,” Girish said in March 2020 [42]. In July 2020 Freshworks asked the court to dismiss the case, arguing the complaint lacked specificity and that Zoho was building a broad case out of one alleged incident [43].

What happened next:

• In November 2020 Zoho filed a further complaint over alleged access to its customer database through an employee [44].
• In February 2021 the US court sought the help of the Madras High Court to examine evidence from former Freshworks employees [44].
• On 23 December 2021 the companies announced a settlement and Zoho dismissed the suit. Freshworks said “a now-former Freshworks sales employee, using his spouse’s computer without her knowledge,” had improperly accessed and used Zoho’s confidential sales-lead information, that “these actions were not taken at the direction of Freshworks”, and that it had taken steps to prevent a recurrence [8].

Status: Settled and closed in December 2021. The terms, including any payment, were not disclosed [8] [44]. No court made findings against Girish personally.

IPO securities class action (2022–present)

Allegation: In November 2022, after the share price fell below the IPO price, investors filed a class action in the US District Court for the Northern District of California (Sundaram v. Freshworks Inc.). They alleged that the IPO registration statement and prospectus failed to disclose slowing growth, falling net dollar retention and other trends, in breach of the US Securities Act [40] [41]. The appeal docket lists Freshworks, Girish (as Rathna Girish Mathrubootham), other directors and officers, and the IPO underwriters as defendants [9].

Response: Freshworks said: “We don’t comment on pending litigation and intend to defend this and any similar case vigorously” [41].

What happened next:

• In June 2023 the judge dismissed most of the claims but let one omission claim continue [10].
• On 10 April 2025 the court granted summary judgment to all defendants, finding that the market had absorbed the information before the stock first fell below US$36, so “no omission by Defendants caused Freshworks’s stock price to drop below the IPO price” [10] [11].
• The plaintiffs appealed to the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (No. 25-3127) in May 2025, and the parties filed briefs in late 2025 [9].

Status: Defendants won in the trial court. The appeal was pending, with no decision we could find, as of 1 November 2026.

Layoffs alongside a buyback (2024)

Allegation: When Freshworks announced 660 job cuts on the same day as a US$400 million buyback in November 2024, Zoho founder Sridhar Vembu criticised it on X without naming the company. He called the move “naked greed”, said such a company “should not expect any loyalty from its employees ever”, and wrote that “shareholders should come last” [50]. This was criticism, not a legal allegation.

Response: The cuts were announced by CEO Dennis Woodside as part of a restructuring, at a time when Freshworks had raised its annual forecast [49]. We found no public reply from Girish, who was then executive chairman and no longer ran the company day to day.

Status: No legal or regulatory matter. Freshworks went ahead with both the restructuring and the buyback [7] [3].

We found no Indian regulatory action, tax case or criminal case involving Girish Mathrubootham in reliable sources as of 1 November 2026.

Giving back

FC Madras

Girish’s biggest personal project is football. In June 2018 he set up FC Madras, a charitable trust to find and train young footballers, with free scholarships for a residential academy [59]. “I think in India, education is the enemy of sports,” he said at the launch. “To get the next Messi or Ronaldo from India, we need the support of all sports lovers in this country” [59]. In March 2023 he opened a 23-acre residential academy at Mahabalipuram, near Chennai, for 130 athletes, and put in about Rs 100 crore of his own money through the FC Madras Charitable Trust [60]. The academy is run by two former India captains [60].

SaaSBOOMi and Together Fund

He was one of the founders of SaaSBOOMi, a volunteer community of Indian software-product founders built on the idea of paying it forward. Freshworks says he co-launched it in 2015 with about 70 other founders; it has since grown to more than 4,000 members [62]. “We started SaaSBoomi with the dream of making India a product nation,” he said in 2024 [62].

In July 2021, with Manav Garg of Eka Software and others, he launched Together Fund, an US$85 million fund for software startups. “To me, Together is not just a fund, it is a way to pay it forward to the startup community that gave me so much,” he said [57]. A second fund targeting US$150 million had its first close in July 2023 [58]. Together Fund now focuses on AI companies with Indian roots, writing cheques of US$1–10 million [54]. In September 2025 he also invested in Startup Singam, a Tamil startup reality show [54].

Training people without degrees

Freshworks’ STS Software Academy, set up in 2019, trains students in software for a year and then gives them a year’s internship. Of the 96 students in the class of 2022, 88 were placed [63].

Recognition

He was the Technology, Media and Telecom category winner of EY Entrepreneur of the Year 2021 [64], and Forbes India’s Entrepreneur of the Year at its 2022 Leadership Awards [65].

Succession

At Freshworks, Girish planned his own exit. He recruited Dennis Woodside as president in 2022, handed him the CEO role in May 2024, and left the board on 1 December 2025 [46] [52]. The company is now led by professional managers, with Roxanne Austin as chair [52]. Girish remains a significant shareholder but has no executive role [53].

His own focus has shifted to Together Fund, which he now works on full-time [53]. He has said that AI “looms as a monster wave that will cause massive disruption unless founders adapt” [62].

What their journey teaches

Your marks at 17 are not your ceiling. Girish missed a merit seat, was written off by relatives, and studied on borrowed money [18] [20]. He did not become a great student; he became very good at one thing, building software products for customers, over nearly a decade.

Learn the trade on someone else’s payroll. Freshdesk was not a lucky first idea. Girish had built four help desks at Zoho, learned online marketing on a US$50 AdWords budget and lived in the US market before he started [21] [22]. When the Hacker News thread appeared, he was one of the few people anywhere ready to act on it.

Set a kill switch before you start. His nine-month Plan B, with a revenue test and a promise to take the team with him, made a risky jump manageable for a salaried man with a family [30].

Share the upside if you want people to stay. Giving shares to three-quarters of the staff turned Freshworks’ IPO into wealth for hundreds of families, not just the founders and investors [37] [38].

A listing is not the finish line. Freshworks has grown revenue every year since its IPO, yet its stock fell more than 80% from its peak [56]. Growth that slows, pay plans that assume ever-rising prices and layoffs that follow are part of the same story. For more on how markets judge companies over time, see CapitalVia’s Insights.

Know when to hand over. Unlike many founders, he hired his successor, handed him the job and then left the board, and turned to backing the next generation through Together Fund [47] [52].

A profile for general reading, based on public records and reporting as of 1 November 2026. Not investment, tax or legal advice.

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50. 'This is naked greed': Zoho's Sridhar Vembu lashes out at Freshworks sackings - Business Today, Nov 2024
51. Girish Mathrubootham Sells Freshworks Shares Worth $40 Mn - Inc42, Dec 2024
52. What started in Chennai: Girish Mathrubootham ends 15-year Freshworks journey - Business Today, Sep 2025
53. Girish Mathrubootham to exit Freshworks, focus on Together Fund - Entrackr, Sep 2025
54. Reality show to AI apps: Girish Mathrubootham spreads funding wings - Business Standard, Sep 2025
55. Freshworks To Cut 500 Jobs Globally in Fresh Restructuring Push - Outlook Business, May 2026
56. Freshworks Down Nearly 16%, on Track for Record Low Close - Dow Jones Newswires via Tiger Brokers, Feb 2026
57. High-profile entrepreneurs launch $85 million fund to back Indian SaaS startups - TechCrunch, Jul 2021
58. SaaS-focused Together Fund launches $150M corpus Fund II - YourStory, Jul 2023
59. Freshworks founder Mathrubootham starts venture with FC Madras to promote football - The News Minute, Jun 2018
60. Freshworks' Girish Mathrubootham invests Rs 100 Cr in football academy - YourStory, Mar 2023
61. It is my life story, not a business book: Girish Mathrubootham on his autobiography - YourStory, Mar 2025
62. How India's SaaS founders can ride 'the monster wave' of AI - Freshworks (The Works), Apr 2024
63. Freshworks STS Software Academy Class of '22 Graduation - CXOToday, Oct 2024
64. EY Entrepreneur Of The Year 2021 winner: Girish Mathrubootham - EY India, Apr 2022
65. Product manager. Entrepreneur. Public company CEO: Who's the real Girish Mathrubootham? - Forbes India, Mar 2022
66. Girish Mathrubootham, The 'Thalaiva' Of Indian SaaS, On The Making Of The Blockbuster Freshworks - Inc42, Aug 2018
67. Freshdesk founder, who bought his whole team tickets for Kabali, has his dream meeting - The News Minute, Jan 2017
68. The CTO of this Chennai startup is proof that the passion to code matters more than an IIT degree - Quartz India, Jun 2017
69. FreshDesk to FreshWorks: Girish Mathrubootham believes you can build a successful biz without being a jerk - YourStory, Jun 2017
70. Freshworks to end Freshteam HR product, stop renewals from March 2026 - People Matters, Jan 2026
71. Freshworks Undertakes Third Round Of Layoffs Within Six Months - Inc42, Jun 2023
72. Freshworks fiasco: Top VC says Indian founders should see it as a 'cautionary tale' - Business Today, Nov 2022
73. Freshworks files for $100M IPO, special mention for Rajinikanth in filings - YourStory, Aug 2021
74. Freshworks prices IPO at $36 per share to raise over $1 bn via US listing - Business Standard, Sep 2021
75. Freshworks appoints Dennis Woodside as CEO, Girish Mathrubootham named Executive Chairman - Business Today, May 2024
76. Freshworks acquires AnsweriQ - TechCrunch, Feb 2020
77. Freshdesk raises $50 million from Tiger Global, Accel Partners and Google Capital - MediaNama, Apr 2015