Your Daily Dose of Ad World Buzz
Latest
✦Girish Mathrubootham, Who Marketed Software Like a Product✦When Creators Influence Agencies More Than Agencies Influence Creators✦What A Creative Director Does On A Shoot Day✦The Categories Where Generated Copy Still Needs A Signature✦Jayesh Veralkar Leaves Dolby After Thirteen Years For A Record Label✦Turtle Wax Gives Ashutosh Saxena India And ASEAN✦Prose Integrated Picks Up The Communications Mandate For EaseMyTrip✦Cummins India Hands The Managing Director Role To Gbile Adewunmi✦JLL Puts Its First Big India Statement On The Bandra-Worli Sea Link✦The Intern Who Stayed: Himanshu Sharma Takes Sales At JSW Sports✦Bark Out Loud Builds A Campaign On How Little Effort A Dog Makes✦Instagram's Edits App Gets A Canvas That Runs Across Slides✦Girish Mathrubootham, Who Marketed Software Like a Product✦When Creators Influence Agencies More Than Agencies Influence Creators✦What A Creative Director Does On A Shoot Day✦The Categories Where Generated Copy Still Needs A Signature✦Jayesh Veralkar Leaves Dolby After Thirteen Years For A Record Label✦Turtle Wax Gives Ashutosh Saxena India And ASEAN✦Prose Integrated Picks Up The Communications Mandate For EaseMyTrip✦Cummins India Hands The Managing Director Role To Gbile Adewunmi✦JLL Puts Its First Big India Statement On The Bandra-Worli Sea Link✦The Intern Who Stayed: Himanshu Sharma Takes Sales At JSW Sports✦Bark Out Loud Builds A Campaign On How Little Effort A Dog Makes✦Instagram's Edits App Gets A Canvas That Runs Across Slides
Brand Builders

Girish Mathrubootham, Who Marketed Software Like a Product

Ad Tribe Editorial2 min read
Watercolour and ink portrait of Girish Mathrubootham, founder of Freshworks

Business software in India was sold, not marketed. A sales team worked a list, a procurement committee decided, and the company behind the product remained more or less invisible to everyone else.

Girish Mathrubootham co-founded the company then called Freshdesk in Chennai in 2010 with Shan Krishnasamy, after leaving a vice president role at Zoho.

Selling before the committee meets

The shift that made the company was recognising that the decision now begins much earlier, with one person searching for a fix to a problem they have today. That person is not a buyer yet and cannot be sold to, only reached. Reaching them is a marketing job, not a sales one.

Why the brand spending looked excessive

For an Indian software company of its size, the investment in brand marketing was unusual and was read by some as vanity. It was closer to a distribution cost. Without a New York or San Francisco headquarters to lend credibility, recognition had to be manufactured deliberately.

A company nobody has heard of is not cheaper to sell. It is simply paying the cost somewhere less visible.

Chennai as a fact, not a story

The company did not relocate to become credible, and in September 2021 it listed on Nasdaq at a valuation of around ten billion dollars, raising just over a billion. It was the first Indian software as a service company to list there.

What Girish Mathrubootham stepped back from

He served as chief executive until 2024 and is now founder and executive chairman, which puts the brand he personified into the hands of people who did not create it. That transition is where founder led brands usually thin out.

What advertising people should take from it

That business to business is not a reason to be dull. The buyer is a person with a search box and a shortlist, and the brand that arrives before the requirement document is written has already narrowed the field.

Related on Ad Tribe

#Brand Builders#Brand Strategy#saas#South India
Follow Ad Tribe