Latest news with #GirishMathrubootham
Time of India
25-07-2025
- Business
- Time of India
ETtech Deals Digest: Startups raise $460 million in July so far, down 47% on-year
Startups across seed, early, and late stages raised the funds through 80 deals, compared to 161 in the year-ago month. Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads Indian startups raised about $460.5 million in funding between July 1 and 25, marking a 47.3% decrease from the full month last year, when they had raised a total of $874.2 million across 161 far this month, startups, primarily in the seed, early, and late stages, secured funding through 80 rounds, according to data from market intelligence platform contrast, May 2025 saw stronger momentum, with startups raising approximately $896.7 million across 74 week—from July 19 to July 25—funding stood at $211.3 million, accounting for nearly half of the month's total so messaging platform Gupshup raised $60 million, with the majority in the form of equity funding from venture capital firm Globespan Capital Partners and the rest as debt from EvolutionX Debt diagnostics services firm MedGenome raised $47.5 million in a funding round co-led by private equity firm Maj Invest, along with investment firms Novo Holdings and payments firm PayU received a capital infusion of $35.1 million from its parent, Prosus, the Dutch-listed arm of South African technology investor computing startup QpiAI raised $32 million in a funding round led by Avataar Venture Partners and India's National Quantum artificial intelligence (AI) startup Composio has raised $25 million in funding led by Lightspeed Venture Partners . The round also saw participation from existing investors, such as Elevation Capital and Girish Mathrubootham's Together Fund, in addition to angel investors, such as Gokul Rajaram, Rubrik cofounder Sohum Mazumdar, HubSpot founder Dharmesh Shah, and others.
Yahoo
15-07-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Freshworks (FRSH): A Bull Case Theory
We came across a bullish thesis on Freshworks on Hidden Gems Research's Substack. As of 14ᵗʰ July, Freshworks's share was trading at $14.12. FRSH's forward P/E was 27.69 according to Yahoo Finance. A close-up of a server running a cloud-native platform, symbolizing the power of the software-as-a-service (SaaS) business area. Freshworks, a $4B software business, is trading at a steep discount to its fair value following a management transition. The company's stock has dropped ~30% since its founder and CEO, Girish Mathrubootham, stepped down to focus on product development. Despite this, the new CEO, Dennis Woodside, has a strong track record of execution in various leadership roles, including President of Impossible Foods and COO of Dropbox. Woodside's experience and leadership appear under-appreciated by the market, presenting an investment opportunity. The company's software portfolio has strong product reviews and is winning more mid and large enterprise deals, despite competing with major incumbents like ServiceNow, Zendesk, and Hubspot. Freshworks' focus on ease of use, affordability, and customer satisfaction is ideal in a tight software spending environment. The company has consistently performed above analyst expectations, beating top and bottom line estimates in recent years. This trend may lead to a re-rating of the stock as investor confidence improves following the management transition. Freshworks trades at a steep discount to the industry median EV/NTM revenue multiple, ~40% below the median, and ~90% below the industry multiple on a growth-adjusted basis. A discounted cash flow model implies that the stock trades ~40% below fair value today. With a strong growth and margin profile, newer AI products and features may add to the future upside case. The company's guidance has already been de-risked, making the current stock price an attractive entry point with limited downside risk. In the best-case scenario, the stock could re-rate significantly, offering an exceptional risk/reward skew for investors. Previously, we covered a bullish thesis on ServiceNow, Inc. by Francesco Ferrari in June 2025, which highlighted the company's strong free cash flow, scalable margins, and long-term compounding potential. The company's stock price has depreciated by approximately 3.46% since our coverage. This is because valuation concerns outweighed near-term performance. The thesis still stands as long-term fundamentals remain intact. The author of the Freshworks thesis shares a similar view but emphasizes on underappreciated execution in a discounted SaaS peer. Freshworks is not on our list of the 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. As per our database, 41 hedge fund portfolios held FRSH at the end of first quarter which was 41 in the previous quarter. While we acknowledge the risk and potential of FRSH as an investment, we believe certain AI stocks offer greater upside potential and carry less downside risk. If you're looking for an extremely undervalued AI stock that also stands to benefit significantly from Trump-era tariffs and the onshoring trend, see our free report on the best short-term AI stock. READ NEXT: 8 Best Wide Moat Stocks to Buy Now and 30 Most Important AI Stocks According to Blackrock. Disclosure: None. Sign in to access your portfolio
Time of India
06-05-2025
- Business
- Time of India
Agentic AI reshaping enterprise software pricing, business models
Agentic artificial intelligence is changing the business models of Indian SaaS and enterprise software players, which are increasingly replacing humans with bots. #Pahalgam Terrorist Attack Pakistan's economy has much more to lose than India's due to the ongoing tensions, warns Moody's Ratings The day Pakistan got the power to poke India FM Sitharaman meets ADB chief and Italian FM, discusses economic issues; no mention of Pakistan As the industry shifts to consumption and outcome-based pricing models, some companies are charging a premium for AI products , while many others are moving to API-based billing where the users are charged based on the actual use of the software. Some are also bundling services with other offerings. Girish Mathrubootham, founder and executive chairman of SaaS company Freshworks , in a recent media interaction said that earlier companies bought software based on the number of people who would use it, say $50 per person in a 100-member team. Play Video Pause Skip Backward Skip Forward Unmute Current Time 0:00 / Duration 0:00 Loaded : 0% 0:00 Stream Type LIVE Seek to live, currently behind live LIVE Remaining Time - 0:00 1x Playback Rate Chapters Chapters Descriptions descriptions off , selected Captions captions settings , opens captions settings dialog captions off , selected Audio Track default , selected Picture-in-Picture Fullscreen This is a modal window. Beginning of dialog window. Escape will cancel and close the window. Text Color White Black Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Opacity Opaque Semi-Transparent Text Background Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Opacity Opaque Semi-Transparent Transparent Caption Area Background Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Opacity Transparent Semi-Transparent Opaque Font Size 50% 75% 100% 125% 150% 175% 200% 300% 400% Text Edge Style None Raised Depressed Uniform Drop shadow Font Family Proportional Sans-Serif Monospace Sans-Serif Proportional Serif Monospace Serif Casual Script Small Caps Reset restore all settings to the default values Done Close Modal Dialog End of dialog window. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like What Most Retirees Don't Know About Making Money from Home 9zero Learn More Undo But with AI agents that can act autonomously, this can be done with less than half as many people. Monish Darda, cofounder and chief technology officer at Icertis, a contract lifecycle management firm, told ET that with AI agents replacing users, the business model is evolving to how many agents and how many workflows as opposed to how many users. Live Events As a result, consumption and outcome-based pricing are currently seeing wider adoption. Shobhit Jain, managing director and head, enterprise technology and services at Avendus Capital, said for most companies 40-50% of the work has moved away from the per-user, per-transaction model. He added that many are taking the risk of output-driven pricing, where the cost hinges on the outcome delivered. Discover the stories of your interest Blockchain 5 Stories Cyber-safety 7 Stories Fintech 9 Stories E-comm 9 Stories ML 8 Stories Edtech 6 Stories Some are creating separate pricing for GenAI services . ETtech Premium for GenAI service Venk Krishnan, CEO of NuWare and managing partner at NuVentures , said that they are charging a 20-25% premium for AI services. 'If we were charging $25 per hour before, we are now charging $40 now because customers also understand that we need to hire domain experts in the AI and LLM space, which results in increased cost for us,' he said. But he cautions that with the rapid pace of technology, customer expectations are changing and the premium tag might not last long. Raghu Malpani, chief technology officer at UiPath, a robotic process automation company, said for the GenAI services, they have created in some cases, an AI unit, where customers are charged based on the number of (LLM) model calls they make. 'They might also buy in bundles, like buying a million AI units,' he said. Limitations of consumption-based pricing Darda of Icertis said some enterprises do not like the uncertainty in budgets and are seeking fixed prices upfront. 'That is where consumption-based pricing takes a hit,' he said. He explained that in case of per-user pricing, 'you know how much you are paying for', but that is not the case for consumption-based pricing. 'If I make 50 more queries today, I'll pay more, yes. So, they say 'we don't want this uncertainty, because it's very hard for us to budget'.' So Icertis is bundling multiple services. 'We will give 10,000 API calls and if this exceeds, we will make it up next year.' Krish Subramanian, cofounder and chief executive of ChargeBee, which offers billing software to companies, concurred. When a customer is trying out a new product, pay-per-use makes a lot more sense. But as they become regular users, their expectations are also changing, he said. 'They want a clear budget on how much they will pay every month or a year. One way to do it is the credit model that breaks the subscription to see how much the customer actually used,' he said. 'What I believe is that the future is going to be a hybrid model where you use pricing for different purposes at different stages.'
