All In: Memoirs of the Freshworks Founder

When my turn came, I tossed aside the script. I stepped on to the stage, not as a polished founder, but as a storyteller. ‘I’m thirty-six years old,’ I began, letting the silence settle. ‘I have two kids and just one wife.’ Laughter rippled through the room, breaking the tension. I continued, drawing them into my world. ‘In my previous job, I drove a Honda Civic. Life was comfortable, predictable. Then I launched a start-up. Now I drive a Ford Figo hatchback.’

In 2010, Girish Mathrubootham left a cushy, well-paying job and founded Freshworks (then Freshdesk) to create a better way to service customers. What began as a single product focused on customer service is now a company that operates in thirteen global locations to deliver a comprehensive suite of products to more than 70,000 clients worldwide.

In All In, Girish tells us the incredible story of his life: from growing up in Trichy, the temple town of Tamil Nadu, to finding refuge in rebellion as a troubled teenager and eventually arriving in Chennai after his engineering degree. For Girish, then with limited resources and money, Chennai wasn’t about success-it was about surviving. But not only did he survive, he also created one of the fastest-growing product companies in the world.

Candid and forthright, in this book, Girish unveils a rare dimension of himself, opening up about his early entrepreneurial failures, the challenges of being a software engineer in the US and the learnings he took from mentors like Kumar Vembu at Zoho. For all dreamers and aspiring entrepreneurs, All In is a window to a new world of achievements.