Founded in 2010, Freshworks started its journey from a 700 sq ft warehouse in Chennai, as a software as a service (SaaS) provider for customer support operations. In 2018, it became the first pure-play SaaS unicorn of India. Today, Freshworks' products are used by over 150 unicorns. That’s about 20 percent of all unicorns globally.

Since inception two decades ago, US-based venture capital firm General Catalyst has pumped in over USD 14 billion in more than 1,000 startups globally. In recent years, it has seen some notable IPOs, including AirBnB, Vroom, Cazoo, Deliveroo and more. The fund, which invests across stages - seed to growth and beyond, recently closed its eleventh fund with a corpus of USD 4.6 billion. Its largest fundraise till date. It is out of this fund that General Catalyst seeks to actively invest in Indian startups.

“We are hoping that it will be a great strategic investor. What we are thinking is this is a 20-30 year business build out. It is not a 5-6 year thing. So we are in it for the long haul,” said Shetty, the CEO of BankBazaar.com, which is backed by WSV, Experian, Eight Roads, Sequoia India, Walden International and Amazon.

For years, as a second home, the Silicon Valley has been fostering some of India's brightest minds, their technological talents and their world-changing ideas. Sundar Pichai, Satya Nadella, Jayashree Ullal and Anjali Sud are among the growing list of Indian-origin CEOs of America's global corporate giants.