Freshworks Brings New Tech Stack To Power Startups

Software company Freshworks on Nov. 11 debuted Freshstack, a customer relationship management suite of products built for the unique needs of startups. The new platform unifies customer support, sales, and marketing teams.

The Freshstack product suite offers a trifecta of support, combining Freshworks’ products — Freshdesk, Freshsales, and Freshmarketer — to unify startups’ customer support, sales, and marketing teams in an easier-to-use package. The new scalable CRM bundle helps startups personalize marketing to generate pipelines, deliver omnichannel service, and grow faster at a price point that is easy to deploy and manage.

Research shows that the biggest-ticket purchase in the typical startup toolkit is a CRM application. Avoiding overpaying for legacy SaaS should be a top priority for any company when the second most common reason a startup fails is running out of cash, according to Rajiv Ramanan, director of technology partnerships at Freshworks.

“Current legacy SaaS providers are focused on the world’s largest enterprises (Fortune 500) and have forgotten the number one need of most businesses: easy. Freshworks addresses that gap,” he told CRM Buyer.

Startup founders should ensure that their developers are focused on building their core technology, not babysitting their CRM stack, added Girish Mathrubootham, CEO and founder of Freshworks.

Freshworks’ products democratize access to modern, easy-to-use software. Freshstack builds on that commitment by helping the titans of tomorrow get going faster today, he said.

Overcomes Legacy Shortcomings

Legacy CRM software is complex, expensive, and distracts startups from their mission of developing products and scaling business. Legacy CRMs are bloated, difficult to use, and miss the mark on what customers want, noted Ramanan.

That is where Freshworks’ CRM comes in. Freshstack deepens its commitment to the startup community. Companies can get going with up to $3,000 in credits for Freshstack as part of the startup program, he said.

Packaged as “Freshstack,” the CRM solution combines three Freshworks products: Freshdesk for customer support solutions, Freshsales for lead engagement, and Freshmarketer for marketing automation. Most CRM solutions take months to implement and need specialized training. Freshstack is easy to try, easy to buy, and easy to get up and running fast for any size business.

“Freshstack is designed with startups in mind and has every feature they need to help drive business growth and customer acquisition as they scale quickly. Running a successful startup is stressful enough, and Freshworks makes customer delight easy by allowing teams to be more focused on building the company, not managing a CRM stack,” Ramanan said.

Unicorn Favorite

In today’s business environment, 20 percent of the world’s unicorns use Freshworks products to delight their customers and employees. Companies including Databricks, Klarna, Browserstack, and Chargebee implemented Freshworks years before reaching that status, according to Freshworks.

Unicorn is the term used in the venture capital industry to describe a startup company with a value of over $1 billion. As of 2021, only 554 so-called unicorn companies exist worldwide.

After strong product adoption within this fast-growing cohort, Freshworks launched a dedicated startup program in 2019. This program helped more than 2,500 startups with critical resources, mentoring, and community.

“Companies who want to build for the future cannot win using software of the past. A well-designed, scalable technology stack is critical for the growth and efficiency of a startup — and this is true for all stages,” said Rajan Anandan, managing director of Sequoia Capital India.

Organizations like Freshworks help founders around the world get access to resources that help them scale from day one and at every step of their company-building journey, he added.

“From early-stage startup to unicorn, we have relied on Freshdesk, Freshmarketer, and Freshsales to support our growth. Putting all three of these Freshworks apps together as one unified Freshstack is a great addition to the value Freshworks provides startups and will be life-changing for the next generation,” offered Krish Subramanian, co-founder and CEO of subscription billing and revenue management platform Chargebee.

What Freshstack Does

The combination of Freshworks applications helps give startups what they need to instantly get up and running with a CRM platform that attracts new customers, builds lasting relationships with existing users, and scales as their customer base grows.

Freshstack is easy to onboard and configure. It includes:

• Freshdesk: an omnichannel customer support solution with a new unified inbox and collaboration functionality across support, sales and marketing teams, to help businesses resolve issues faster
• Freshsales: a unified sales intelligence solution with context-driven forecasting and pipeline management
• Freshmarketer: marketing automation software that enables AI-driven lead generation, email personalization, and send optimization
• Access to the Freshworks Marketplace with hundreds of apps to customize the CRM suite to their needs.

Companies of any size can use Freshstack. We have found that this combination of features is most helpful for startups that need to get up and running quickly and are less focused on extreme customization that often comes later in the business cycle,” added Ramanan.

Freshworks is familiar with the needs of startups. Since 2019, the company has supported more than 2,500 startups with resources and mentorship through its startup program.

Proprietary Roots

Freshstack uses the proprietary Freshworks Neo low-code/no-code platform. It provides a unified view of data on an embedded customer data platform.

With Neo, businesses can quickly and easily extend and customize Freshstack for their environments and better serve their customers and prospects. Neo also powers the Freshworks Marketplace, which features over 1,200 easy-to-use apps for anything ranging from agent productivity and workflows to accounting and governance.

Visit Freshworks for more information about the Freshstack platform and startup program.