Girish Mathrubootham is the founder and CEO of Freshworks, the first Indian SaaS company to be listed in NASDAQ — and when he’s in his home country, he gets the celebrity treatment. Freshworks’ 2021 IPO was a milestone for the country’s tech sector, and Mathrubootham has also attracted a “take a selfie with me!” level of fame for trying to change the conversation about entrepreneurship there. “You can be successful in business without doing bad things,” he says. “Being a good person and winning is not mutually exclusive.”
In this episode, Girish and Joubin discuss the silver lining of COVID lockdown; learning how to make mistakes and fight for what you want; why Girish started Freshworks after finding success at Zoho; the challenges of starting a small business in Chennai in the early 2010s; the “modern jail” of being a CEO; immediate job offers; “Indian cowboys”; why multi-product startups should hire in India; why moving to the US was like competing in the Olympics; and why the IPO is not the endgame.
In this episode, we cover:
- Growing up in a “tier-two town” and social norms in India (06:03)
- Why entrepreneurial people don’t always fit in at big companies (13:00)
- Being a celebrity businessman in India, breaking up biases, and the pressure of being an idol (20:49)
- 500 crorepatis and generating wealth for employees (24:27)
- Why Girish started Freshworks, originally known as Freshdesk (28:09)
- Keeping up morale & being scrappy when Freshworks didn’t have much funding (36:35)
- Nostalgia for the early days and the luxury of time (39:44)
- “Ripoff or not” and doing battle with a respected analyst (45:29)
- Growing from one product to many, and the support needed to do that (49:58)
- Deciding to build a billion-dollar company, and moving from India to the US (58:43)
- Why Girish has re-committed himself to Freshworks for at least seven more years (01:04:24)
- Finding happiness in small things and not letting others control your feelings (01:07:57)
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