Latest news with #Chennai-headquartered
Time of India
a day ago
- Business
- Time of India
Freshworks Q2 revenue rises 18% to $205 million, net loss narrows
Academy Empower your mind, elevate your skills Nasdaq-listed software-as-a-service (SaaS) company Freshworks reported an 18% year-on-year increase in revenue to $204.7 million for the quarter ended June 30, up from $174.1 million a year San Mateo- and Chennai-headquartered company also narrowed its net loss to $1.7 million, compared to $20.1 million in the same period last year. The improvement came as the company reduced operating expenses and saw increased adoption of its AI-powered solutions among mid-market and enterprise by improved quarterly financials, Freshworks has raised its revenue guidance for the third quarter of FY25. It now expects revenue to be in the range of $207 million to $210 million, reflecting 11% to 12% year-on-year growth. For the full year, the company has projected revenue between $822.9 million and $828.9 million.'Freshworks delivered another strong quarter, exceeding our previously provided financial estimates in Q2,' said Dennis Woodside , chief executive officer and president of Freshworks. 'We believe our strong momentum through the first half of the year reflects that businesses are increasingly turning to Freshworks to reduce complexity. They want AI-powered employee and customer service solutions that are fast to implement, easy to use, and built to deliver results.'Woodside said the company's growth strategy is anchored around three key drivers of investing in employee experience, delivering AI capabilities across its product suite to accelerate adoption, and expanding its customer experience said over 60% of its total annual recurring revenue (ARR) now comes from mid-market and enterprise customers. It defines mid-market as organizations with 251 to 5,000 employees, and enterprises as those with more than 5,000 income from operations rose to $44.8 million, up from $13.1 million in Q2 FY24. Net cash provided by operating activities also grew to $58.6 million, compared to $36.3 million a year operating expenses fell 4% year-on-year to $182.1 million, from $189.7 million, driven by reductions in sales and marketing, as well as research and development the potential impact of US tariffs on its business on an earnings call, Woodside said Freshworks continues to see robust demand, supported by a highly diversified customer base. He added that no single industry dominates its portfolio, and the company has limited exposure to sectors particularly affected by AI tools, including its Freddy Copilot assistant, are expected to further drive adoption and monetisation across its product lines. During the quarter, the company launched the next generation of its Freddy Agentic AI platform, which includes Freddy AI Agent Studio, a no-code platform designed to help businesses deploy autonomous AI agents to scale customer company noted its Freddy Copilot and Freddy Agent products have already crossed $20 million in combined number of customers contributing more than $5,000 in annual recurring revenue (ARR) rose 10% year-on-year to 23,975 during the quarter, while Freshwork's net dollar retention rate, a metric that measures revenue retention from existing customers, remained steady at 106%, similar to Q2 currently serves more than 74,000 customers across over 120 countries in industries including ecommerce, logistics, financial services, automotive, manufacturing, entertainment, and in Chennai in 2010, Freshworks initially targeted small and medium businesses (SMBs). However, it has increasingly shifted focus to mid-market and enterprise clients to counter macroeconomic softness in its traditional SMB May 2024, the company underwent a major internal restructuring, with founder Girish Mathrubootham moving into the role of executive chairman and Dennis Woodside stepping in as CEO.
Time of India
2 days ago
- Health
- Time of India
Insurer rejects claim citing break in policy renewal, consumer forum says ‘unjustified'
Ghaziabad: The District Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission (DCDRC) in Ghaziabad has directed Star Health and Allied Insurance Company Limited to pay Rs 2.1 lakh to a Bulandshahr resident after rejecting his insurance claim on what the forum called "unjustified grounds". In its order dated July 15, the commission, headed by Praveen Kumar Jain, ruled that the Chennai-headquartered insurer must pay the amount via its Ghaziabad office within 45 days. Failing to do so would attract an interest of 6% per annum until the claim is settled. The forum also imposed Rs 5,000 as litigation costs and compensation for mental harassment caused to the consumer. You Can Also Check: Noida AQI | Weather in Noida | Bank Holidays in Noida | Public Holidays in Noida The case was filed by Rajendra Prasad, a resident of Bulandshahr, who approached the consumer forum in Sept 2021. Prasad said he purchased a Family Health Optima insurance policy in 2018 that covered him, his wife Sarla Devi, and son Akshay Tomar. The Rs 5.5 lakh family floater policy, purchased from the insurer's Ghaziabad branch, had been renewed each year without fail, he said. In early 2021, Prasad was admitted to Narendra Mohan Heart Hospital in Ghaziabad with chest pain from Jan 5 to 10, followed by a second hospitalisation at Shankar Lal Hospital from Jan 16 to 21 due to high fever and complications. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like The Secret Lives of the Romanovs — the Last Rulers of Imperial Russia! Learn More He spent around Rs 1.9 lakh at the first, empanelled hospital and Rs 50,000 at the second. However, Star Health rejected his claim, citing a "break in policy renewal". Prasad challenged the insurer's stand, stating that he never allowed the policy to lapse and had renewed it well in time. When served notice, the company initially failed to respond, prompting the commission to initiate ex-parte proceedings. Later, the insurer argued that the claim was rightly rejected as Prasad renewed the policy when he was already unwell. After reviewing the case, the commission concluded that this was not a valid reason to deny the claim. "The complainant was admitted on Jan 5, and even if he fell ill on Jan 3—the date of policy renewal—the policy was in force on the date of admission," the commission observed. Since both hospital stays fell within the policy's validity period, the commission held the insurer responsible for inadequate service and ordered it to settle the full claim.
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Business Standard
4 days ago
- Business
- Business Standard
Bluehill VC to announce final close of maiden fund by end of 2025
Bluehill VC is targeting the final close of its ₹350 crore maiden fund by the end of 2025. The firm has already raised ₹225 crore and has made investments in deep-tech startups New Delhi Listen to This Article Deep-tech investor Bluehill VC is targeting the final close of its first fund of ₹350 crore by the end of this calendar year, said its co-founder and general partner Manu Iyer. The Chennai-headquartered investor, which received Securities and Exchange Board of India approval in May 2024, announced its first close of ₹80 crore in August that year, and has so far raised ₹225 crore. It has completed three investments in line with its plans to invest in four to five companies each year. The company aims to invest in 16-20 companies with an average ticket size of $1-$1.5 million over
Time of India
7 days ago
- Business
- Time of India
Indian Bank Q1 Result: PAT jumps 24% to Rs 2,973 crore on lower NPA provisions
Lower bad loan provisions helped Indian Bank report a 24% rise in net profit for the first quarter to Rs 2,973 crore, compared with Rs 2,403 crore in the year-ago period. Its pre-provision operating profit rose 6% year-on-year to Rs 4,770 crore from Rs 4,502 crore. Explore courses from Top Institutes in Please select course: Select a Course Category Finance others Data Science Product Management MBA healthcare Public Policy Technology Cybersecurity CXO MCA Digital Marketing Leadership Design Thinking Management Data Analytics Others Project Management Data Science PGDM Artificial Intelligence Healthcare Degree Operations Management Skills you'll gain: Duration: 9 Months IIM Calcutta SEPO - IIMC CFO India Starts on undefined Get Details Skills you'll gain: Duration: 7 Months S P Jain Institute of Management and Research CERT-SPJIMR Fintech & Blockchain India Starts on undefined Get Details Provisions against NPAs for the quarter stood at Rs 387 crore, compared with Rs 896 crore in the same period last year. Total provisions were also lower at Rs 691 crore, down from Rs 1,258 crore. The Chennai-headquartered lender's asset quality improved, with the gross non-performing assets (NPA) ratio falling 76 basis points to 3.01% at the end of June, from 3.77% a year earlier. Its net interest margin (NIM) for the quarter stood at 3.35%, 19 basis points lower than in the year-ago period. Live Events Net interest income rose modestly by 3% to Rs 6,359 crore, while other income recorded a healthy 28% rise to Rs 2,439 crore. The state-owned lender's gross advances grew 11.5% year-on-year to Rs 6.02 lakh crore, while total deposits rose 9.26% to Rs 7.44 lakh crore.
Time of India
19-07-2025
- Business
- Time of India
Zoho courts the enterprise CIO with its own LLM and agentic AI stack
Zoho , a Chennai-headquartered SaaS company, has entered the foundational model arena with the launch of its proprietary large language model , Zia LLM . The announcement, made on the sidelines of its annual Zoholics India conference in Bengaluru, signals a growing ambition to deepen its AI footprint—while maintaining its hallmark focus on privacy and affordability. 'The announcement emphasises Zoho's long-standing aim to build foundational technology focused on the protection of customer data, breadth and depth of capabilities because of the business context, and value,' said Mani Vembu, CEO of Zoho. 'Our LLM model is trained specifically for business use cases, keeping privacy and governance at its core, which has resulted in lowering the inference cost, passing on that value to the customers, while also ensuring that they can utilise AI productively and efficiently.' How can Zoho's move into building its own LLM be viewed then: A bid for strategic differentiation, or a necessary pivot as enterprises demand more sovereignty and cost control over AI? Arun Chandrasekaran, Distinguished VP Analyst at Gartner, framed it as the former. 'The move is aimed at creating a differentiation for business use cases, targeting efficiency and privacy for customers who can't afford or don't want to rely on large external LLM providers,' he said. A right-sized, In-house stack Built fully in-house and trained using NVIDIA's AI-accelerated computing platform, Zia LLM comprises three model sizes—1.3 billion, 2.6 billion, and 7 billion parameters. Each is optimized separately for distinct business contexts such as structured data extraction, summarisation, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), and code generation. This tiered model strategy enables Zoho to balance performance and compute efficiency across user scenarios, a principle the company refers to as 'right-sizing.' It also gives Zoho the flexibility to scale Zia LLM gradually; the first round of parameter increases is expected by the end of 2025. 'By building its own AI stack , Zoho is hoping to appeal to businesses that care about domain-specific AI, AI integrated into business workflows while simultaneously being sovereign and cost efficient,' Chandrasekaran said. To that end, Zoho has launched a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server that opens its library of workflow actions to third-party AI agents. While customers can still integrate with external models like ChatGPT, Llama, and DeepSeek, Zia LLM gives them the option to keep their data within Zoho's environment—benefiting from the latest AI capabilities without sending sensitive information to third-party clouds. The model is now deployed across Zoho data centers in the U.S., India, and Europe. Building agents without code The company also debuted Zia Agent Studio, a no-code platform that lets businesses create AI agents embedded directly within Zoho applications. More than 25 pre-built agents are already available, including several tailored for Indian businesses. 'Our differentiation comes from offering agents over our low-code platform so that there is a human in the loop for verification and modification. It is much simpler to verify and make changes in the UI screen than reading the code,' Vembu said. These agents work across business functions. For instance, a Customer Service Agent in Zoho Desk can process customer queries, respond to common issues, or route complex requests to a human agent. Meanwhile, Zoho's AI assistant, Ask Zia, enables interactive conversations to build reports, analyse data, and assist data teams in creating machine learning models. Zoho also launched India-specific agents that can verify documents like PAN, Voter ID, Udyog Aadhar, GSTIN, Driving Licences, and utility bills—targeting use cases in HR and financial services, such as employee background verification or onboarding checks. Eyeing the enterprise, quietly While Zoho has long positioned itself as a champion of small and mid-sized businesses, its expanding AI stack, with built-in governance and observability tools, may signal broader ambitions. 'While Zoho will remain committed to SMBs, its AI platform capabilities, governance tooling, and agentic capabilities suggest it is testing the waters for enterprise traction. Perhaps they are eyeing upmarket expansion without abandoning affordability,' Chandrasekaran said. That shift could mean rethinking pricing, too. As CIOs evaluate Zoho's AI agents and LLM stack for enterprise deployment, traditional SaaS models may not apply, Chandrasekaran noted: 'CIOs will scrutinize data privacy , extensibility, grounding mechanisms, observability, and interoperability, especially with existing enterprise data and APIs. Also, Agentic AI is giving rise to new pricing models that can potentially challenge the seat-based pricing model of SaaS. How well Zoho can embrace new pricing models (such as usage-based or outcome-based pricing) will be critical for its success with CIOs.'
