Freshdesk acquires data integration startup Pipemonk

Freshdesk announced today that it has acquired Banglaore-based startup Pipemonk for an undisclosed amount. Pipemonk helps companies move data between cloud platforms, which should come in handy for Freshdesk and its partners.

Pipemonk, which was born as ZapStitch, had raised just over $2 million since it launched in 2014, with its primary funding round coming in May, 2015, when it landed $2 million in seed funding led by Helion Venture Partners.

Pipemonk offers customers the ability to move data easily between cloud applications such as CRM, eCommerce, marketing and help desk services. The latter is particularly important to Freshdesk, whose primary products include customer service and help desk offerings.

The company has simplified data integration, a process that has traditionally been fraught with complexity, says Satya Padmanabham, co-founder of Pipemonk. “With the Pipemonk platform, we made it possible for even non-engineers to configure and run an integration in a matter of minutes,” he explained in a statement.

One of the primary differences between cloud services and the on-prem software that came before it, is that they have been designed for the most part with open APIs that allow various services — even those that compete with one another — to work together. The strategy is no longer to keep you locked inside a proprietary stack. Instead, cloud services recognize that you will need to work with other services, and they accommodate that because customers demand it.

Pipemonk gives Freshdesk more than simply a generic way to automate the flow of data between services. It will have practical application in-house, helping pull together the half dozen services, Freshdesk has acquired in a mini shopping binge over the last 16 months.

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Freshdesk acquisitions over the last 16 months. It added Pipemonk today. Chart: Crunchbase.

All 13 Pipemonk employees will be joining Freshdesk, essentially giving it an in-house data integration team. “Having your apps talk to each other and enabling seamless flow of data plays an important role in any business today, and we at Freshdesk are focused on making that workflow process simple for our customers,” Freshdesk CEO and founder Girish Mathrubootham, said in a statement.

Freshdesk launched in 2010 as a cloud customer service platform. Since, it has expanded its products to include IT help desk, CRM, live chat, in-app chat and social testimonial tools. The company has raised almost $150 million.