Chennai-and-Silicon-Valley-based SAAS (software as a service) firm, Freshworks, has acquired US-based customer-success cloud company, Natero Inc.

The acquisition means that Freshworks finds itself in pole position to become the industry’s first-ever customer engagement platform to connect all customer-experience touch-points, from a web-visit to invoice-generation.

A media release from Freshworks stated that the company’s acquisition of Natero now provides it with a SAAS platform that “unifies marketing, sales, support, and customer success”.

Natero’s artificial-intelligence and machine-learning-powered technology will also enable Freshworks to churn out more engaging data that could be invaluable to customer-success professionals. The company has not disclosed the cost of its acquisition.

“Customer engagement should not stop with just marketing, sales and support. Today, every business needs to invest in proactively managing customers,” said Girish Mathrubootham, founder and chief executive officer of Freshworks, in a statement.

Girish added, “The addition of the Natero Customer Success Suite enables businesses to understand customers better, offer a personalised and differentiated service.”

In a nutshell, bringing Natero under the Freshworks umbrella will help the latter predict customer churn, increase account expansion potential and manage more customers with fewer resources, thereby increasing efficiencies within the company.

“Predictive AI can then increase customer engagement and improve the experience at every customer touchpoint,” said CRM (customer relationship management) analyst, Esteban Kolsky, on the importance of predictive customer management software. Natero has been added to the Freshworks 360 suite, in order to bolster it with newer capabilities.

In a statement, Natero’s founder and chief executive officer, Craig Soules said that he was excited to join Freshworks’ growing global team. “We share Freshworks’ passion and commitment to providing an unrivalled customer experience,” said Soules in the statement. Soules founded Natero in 2012.

Late last year, Freshworks became the newest unicorn from the Indian start-up ecosystem. The company’s last round of funding in 2018 saw it raise $100 million from Tiger Global, Accel Partners, Sequoia and CapitalG. The company also announced a revenue milestone of $100 million for the first time since inception.

First Published:May 21, 2019 8:55 PM IST