Tech + Science

He came to Victoria from India at 25 and built a multimillion-dollar app business

Life Story: Born in a landlocked town in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh to government worker parents, Samarth Mod was out of his element when he moved to Victoria at age 25 to pursue an MBA at UVic's Peter B. Gustavson School of Business. With experience developing mobile...

By Nathan Caddell /

Credit: Lindsay Siu

Samarth Mod, 29

Co-founder and CEO
FRESHWORKS STUDIO

Life Story: Born in a landlocked town in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh to government worker parents, Samarth Mod was out of his element when he moved to Victoria at age 25 to pursue an MBA at UVic’s Peter B. Gustavson School of Business. With experience developing mobile apps for large corporations in India, he and his partner, Rohit Boolchandani, were in over their heads with their first entrepreneurial journey. “It was a big fail for us,” Mod recalls. “We were making an app for the boating market, and we didn’t quite understand boating. Where I come from, there’s no water.”

That was in 2014. Since then, Victoria-based FreshWorks has benefited from the networking instincts of its founders, who were able to get well-known B.C. investors such as Manny Padda and Praveen Varshney on their internal advisory board. The company now counts BC Hydro and Power Authority, Harbour Air and the Vancouver International Wine Festival among its clients.

The Bottom Line: FreshWorks raked in seven figures in 2017 and had 38 employees at press time. The company plans to open offices in Eastern Canada and expand to the U.S. in the next two years.

Who is your role model?
I’m a big believer in hard work, and the hardest-working person out there is Elon Musk.

My favourite movie is…
Interstellar. I’m a big sci-fi guy. I’ve watched it 10 times, and it’s still hard to grasp some of the concepts there.

A little-known fact about me is…
I’m a terrible dancer.

#30under30