We
LOVE
Software

Our Journey started way back in early 2013 when we started to launch the Freshdesk brand in South Africa. At that time the “Freshworks” brand did not exist with “Freshdesk” being their only product. The other products like Freshservice, Freshchat and Freshsales followed in quick succession and like Freshdesk, soon became market leaders.

I often think about why I went with Freshdesk all those years ago and I believe it is what Girish Mathrubootham, the founder of Freshworks, was trying to do. It all boiled down to making ticketing incredibly simple… simple in the sense that software needs to be easy to deploy, use and manage.

The other big players in the market built software so that it was by definition complicated and that in turn necessitated the need for big deployment projects and ongoing support all coming at a cost. Fantastic if you wanted to build a consulting company based on time but that was not my goal. My goal was to build a company that was lean and agile and most importantly could offer that local layer of excellent support. I could only do this with software that I myself could deploy and that is exactly how the Freshworks stack is built. Even as they added the other product to their offering to become a true platform player, the theme of a clean and simple interface and software that is easy to deploy and manage, has never changed. Even though I am the CEO of Fresh Tech Africa my technical skills have never been great, but I can deploy any of our products. This is exactly why I like Freshworks: if I was “Head of Sales” or “Head of Customer Experience” I shouldn’t need to be technical – I should easily be able to manage my software and get on with what really matters which is Selling and Customer Service. Even on the ITSM side which is certainly more complex as you need to understand ITIL principles, Freshservice has made it easy.

As amazing as Freshworks is, it cannot focus on all types of software, so this is where we have introduced new vendors to our offering: MoEngage to address Digital Marketing and Injixo for Work Force Management. Again, the choice in these vendors followed the same criteria: Great SAAS software that are leaders in their field, but they had to be “Easy to deploy. Easy to manage. Easy to Use. Just Easy.”

We often debate the concept of “Single Platform/ Single Vendor” versus “Best in Class”. Yes it is nice to have a “Single Vendor” that covers all aspects of your needs but the reality is there is not a single vendor that specialises in all areas of Customer and Employee Engagement. Each vendor is typically strong with their core deliverable and then over the years they add specialities which may or may not be “best in class” In line with that thinking we have opted for “Best in Class” where we have identified the best software solutions to meet each of our core speciality areas which means we have had to spend a lot of time and research to identify which vendors are the best out there and within their overall offering which are the “Best in Class Products”. I know we have made great choices and our large and happy customer bases can attest to this.

So we built a business around the core requirement that software needs to be easy to deploy, easy to manage and make an immediate impact on the customer, whilst not breaking the bank. We then overlaid that with an incredible local team of experts to make it even easier for you, the customer, to adopt the technology.

This is Fresh Tech Africa.

And we really love what we do!