# Freshworks vs HappyFox

> Freshworks and HappyFox were both born in Chennai, India, selling cloud help-desk software to teams drowning in customer email. Freshworks (founded 2010 by Girish Mathrubootham and Shan Krishnasamy) took the venture route, scaled to hundreds of millions in revenue and listed on Nasdaq in 2021 at a roughly $13 billion valuation. HappyFox (founded by Shalin Jain, on the cloud since 2011) went the opposite way - bootstrapped, no outside capital, roughly $20M ARR serving 12,000-plus companies. Same category, same city, two completely different playbooks.

## Achievements

- Freshworks raised more than $1 billion in its 2021 Nasdaq IPO, one of the largest listings by an India-founded SaaS company.
- Freshworks grew from a $100-a-month office to roughly $720M in annual revenue.
- HappyFox reached 12,000+ companies across 70+ countries without raising venture capital.
- HappyFox was named PC Magazine's 'Best Help Desk Software' multiple years running.
- Both companies exported a global SaaS product from Chennai, helping put the city on the map for software.

## Latest updates

- **2025-12** — Freshworks continued its acquisition push in enterprise service and incident management as it broadened beyond support.
- **2026-01** — HappyFox highlighted for AI support agents that stay grounded in a company's own knowledge base, cutting ticket volume.

## Links

- Website: https://www.freshworks.com
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/freshworks-inc-/
- Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/freshworks
- GitHub: https://github.com/freshworks
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/freshworks
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/freshworks/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/freshworksinc

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Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-08-05