Chennai-based Freshworks, formerly known as Freshdesk, a cloud-based business software firm, has acquired Joe Hukum, a platform that helps businesses build their own chatbots, the company announced on Thursday.
This is Freshworks’ eighth buyout so far. The deal amount was not disclosed. As part of the deal, Jain, Kushwaha and Agarwal will be joining Freshworks.
The Joe Hukum team will be responsible for building bots on top of Freshworks’ existing products, enabling workflow automations for demand generation, knowledge management, and dynamic in-app self service.
Joe Hukum, run by GogetSpeedy Technologies Pvt. Ltd, was founded in July 2015 by Arihant Jain, Ajeet Kushwaha, and Rahul Agarwal, who have previously worked with healthcare startups, HealthKart and 1mg.
Joe Hukum’s technology automates sales, service and support workflows across various channels and user interfaces.
The startup’s clients included state-run IRCTC, BookMyTrain, EaseMyTrip, Droom, Kings XI Punjab, PolicyBazaar, Shine, Citrus Payments, Safexpress, Knowlarity, HealthKart and 1mg. It also has a few international clients including a major insurance company with presence in 15 countries.
“We are seeing strong interest from our customers on how they want to leverage chatbots as they are looking for new ways to engage with customers on their web and mobile channels,†said Girish Mathrubootham, founder and chief executive of Freshworks, in a statement.
Founded in October 2010, Freshworks Inc. is backed by Accel Partners, Tiger Global Management, CapitalG, and Sequoia Capital India.
Freshworks has its head office in San Bruno, California and its clients include Honda, Bridgestone, Hugo Boss, University of Pennsylvania, Toshiba and Cisco.
Last month, Freshdesk rebranded itself to Freshworks as part of its initiative to position itself as a multi-product brand and for product clarity. Freshdesk’s flagship product offering was also the name of the company.
Till date, Freshworks has made eight acquisitions, including Joe Hukum.
In January this year, Freshworks had bought software-as-a-service (SaaS) startup Pipemonk for an undisclosed amount.
Before Pipemonk, Freshworks had acquired social chat platform Chatimity Software Pvt. Ltd in October last year for its artificial intelligence-based chatbot.
Prior to that, in April 2016, the company purchased Faridabad-based Memeticlabs Technologies Pvt. Ltd, which operates social media listening and analytics platform Airwoot.
In April 2016, it acquired Pune-based visual collaboration platform Framebench.
In 2015, Freshworks acquired in-app customer support platform Konotor, social recommendation platform Frilp, and video chat software 1Click.io.
In November 2016, Freshworks raised $55 million (Rs 366 crore) in its Series F funding round led by Sequoia Capital India and existing investor Accel Partners.
Prior to that, it raised $50 million in its Series E round of funding led by Tiger Global, with participation from Accel Partners and Google Capital in April 2015.
