Freshworks’ CEO, employees and others to sell shares worth over $500 Mn

A poster-child of the Indian SaaS space, Freshworks has initiated a share sale of more than $500 million for its senior-level leadership, employees and other shareholders, making it one of the largest cashouts by an Indian startup this year. 

The company has filed a re-offer prospectus with the US Securities and Exchange Commission to initiate the sale of 13,555,142 shares of Class A common stock. 

As part of the liquidity event, Freshworks CEO Girish Mathrubhootham will offload more than 2.4 million shares worth over $92.7 million. The company’s chief revenue officer Jose Morales and chief product officer Srinivasagopalan Ramamurthy will sell shares worth over $11.5 million each. 

In total, the company is looking to gradually sell shares worth more than $519 million. The last reported sale price of the company’s Class A common stock was $43.06 per share. At the time of publishing, Freshworks’ shares were trading at $38.3 per share.  

Freshworks became the first Indian-origin software startup to list on the Nasdaq stock exchange following a billion-dollar initial public offering in September, when it raised $1.03 billion, attaining a market cap of well over $10 billion. At the time of writing this story, it had a market capitalisation of $10.8 billion.

In its third-quarter earnings announced last week, Freshworks posted a 46% year-on-year growth in revenue to $96.6 million for the September quarter. Net losses stood at $107.4 million for Q3 2021 as compared to Net income of $1.4 million earned during Q3 2020. However gross profits have grown by 40% to $74.4 million during Q3 2021 as compared to $53.02 million generated during Q3 2020. 

According to the company’s forecasts, it is expecting to rake in revenues between $99-$101 million in the December quarter and between $364.5-$366.5 million in revenues for the whole of 2021. 

Freshworks said the number of customers contributing more than $5,000 in annual recurring revenue (ARR) was 14,079, an increase of 31% year-over-year.