SOFTWARE firm Freshworks is targeting to expand in the Philippines as part of widening its customer base in Southeast Asia.
Simon Ma, Freshworks managing director and regional manager of sales for ASEAN, said that the company has “aggressive expansion plans” aimed at the Philippines and across Southeast Asia.
“You’ll probably hear from us in the next six months or one year, we have aggressive expansion plans in Southeast Asia, (and) in the Philippines itself,” Mr. Ma said on the sidelines of the recent Freshworks’ Global Jam event in Pasay City last week.
“The Philippines is one of the key markets. Freshworks’ Southeast Asia headquarters is in Singapore. We realize (that) with the pandemic and the difference in culture and disparity in the way business operates across different countries, it is very crucial for us to have people in the country and feet on the ground,” he added.
According to Mr. Ma, the planned investment of Freshworks seeks to help prospective customers who wish to try the company’s services and to establish a local ecosystem.
“The areas of investment is first, centered around helping our customers be successful and also the prospective customers that want to try out Freshworks, we need to make sure that we are able to go to them and deliver that,” Mr. Ma said.
“The second part that is very important in all Southeast Asia markets is the partner ecosystem. We need to have an ecosystem of local partners that can also service the existing customers and provide other services as well,” Mr. Ma said.
Further, Mr. Ma said that the company already has partners in the Philippines, and is planning to sustain the buildup of its ecosystem in the country.
He added that the Philippines is ranked high in the company’s priority list in terms of markets that it wants to go after.
“We already have partners in the Philippines and we are continuing to build up that ecosystem. We have a big target market. We address across all industries,” Mr. Ma said.
“We also target small customers to large enterprises. We do not have a hard target in terms of number, but we definitely want to be able to reach as much customers and bring as much value as we can,” he added.
Freshworks is a software firm that provides solutions that allow businesses to have fast and easy engagements with their customers and employees using software-as-a-service platforms. The company currently has over 50,000 customers across the world.
Some of its products include customer service solutions Freshdesk; sales automation solutions Freshsales; marketing automation solutions Freshmarketer; IT service management solutions Freshservice; HR management solutions Freshteam; and engagement solutions Freshchat. — Revin Mikhael D. Ochave
