SaaS startup Freshworks acquires Chatbot Startup Joe Hukum

By Shariq Hussain

Posted on July 21, 2017

Just a few months after its rebranding, cloud-based business software maker Freshworks (earlier Freshdesk) , has acquired Joe Hukum, a platform that helps businesses build their own chatbots for an undisclosed amount.

Post-acquisition, the Joe Hukum team will be joining the Freshworks products teams and will be responsible for building bots and enabling workflow automation.

Joe Hukum is a startup that makes chatbots which enables its use for handfree usage of daily uses. The chatbots is your Virtual Personal Assistant. From Flight Booking To Food Delivery, making reservations, shopping, education, beauty & health, and other basic services like plumber, electrician, carpenter and many more.

Headquarted at Gurgaon, Joe Hukum was founded by in July 2015 by Arihant Jain, Ajeet Kushwaha and Rahul Agarwal, who were also the founding team behind two of India’s most prominent healthcare startups, HealthKart and 1mg.

Commenting on the acquisition Arihant Jain, co-founder of Joe Hukum said, “As a founder, I could not have asked for a better outcome for Joe Hukum. Being a part of Freshworks is super exciting for all of us as it gives us a platform that provides us scale and reach and impact hundreds of thousands of customers.”

FreshWorks is a SaaS startup that enables companies to provide multichannel support via phone, email, chat, website, social networks, and mobile apps. Freshdesk has over 100,000 customers across the world, including 3M, Honda, Hugo Boss, University of Pennsylvania, The Atlantic, and QuizUp. The company is headquartered in San Francisco, California and has a development center in Chennai, India.

This is the eighth acquisition by Freshworks in two years and the second one this year. Previously, it had acquired other startups like Airwoot, Framebench, Konotor, Frilp, 1Click, Chatimity and PipeMonk.

Commenting on the acquisition, Girish Mathrubootham, founder and CEO of Freshworks said, “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. As customer preferences shift from traditional phone tree based call centre support, chatbots offer a new support experience, while essentially solving the age old challenge of triaging customer inquiries and routing that to the right support agent. These are still early days for chatbots, but Joe Hukum’s innovative team and technology will help our clients better engage and support their customers.” Read more about Indian Startup Ecosystem.

SaaS startup Freshworks acquires Chatbot Startup Joe Hukum