SaaS startup Freshworks acquires AnsweriQ; Pradeep Rathinam to join senior exec team

Customer engagement software company Freshworksannounced on Wednesday that it has acquired AnsweriQ Inc. As a part of the acquisition, AnsweriQ CEO Pradeep Rathinam will be joining the senior executive team as its Chief Customer Officer.

In a statement, Founder and CEO of Freshworks Girish Mathrubootham said,

"Pradeep brings executive-level acumen and expertise, which will be leveraged in his new role as Chief Customer Officer as we double-down on our efforts to engage and keep customers for life."

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AnsweriQ provides Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) for large enterprises, to serve their customers better.

Pradeep said, "Unlike clunky, siloed, legacy SaaS solutions, Freshworks is innovating to deliver a powerful and seamless experience across sales, marketing, customer success, and support functions. With Freshworks' commitment to deploying enterprise-scale AI to better understand customers and build relationships for life, this acquisition is a natural fit."

He will be overseeing the company's global customer support, onboarding and customer success organisations, further increasing satisfaction, retention and success of the combined customer base, including AnsweriQ customers 2K Games, Freshly, and SeatGeek.

The company will be complementing Freshworks' AI engine Freddy, enabling enterprises to leverage its existing customer data to scale self-service experiences and automate complex customer workflows.

Freddy will extend its capabilities from a knowledge base dependent AI engine to learn from ticket conversations on the fly. It will, thus, be able to anticipate customer needs, make recommendations for agents based on the conversations and perform tasks including refunds and cancellations.

Girish further said, "The integration of AnsweriQ's technology will enhance our AI and ML capabilities in the customer engagement space and offer significant value to our customers."

This is Freshworks' second acquisition in less than a year. In September 2019, Freshworks acquired Bengaluru-based CanvasFlip, in an undisclosed deal.

Freshworks also recently closed a $150 million funding round, raising its valuation to $3.5 billion. The SaaS company now has more than 2,700 employees working out of its 13 offices around the globe.

(Edited by Saheli Sen Gupta)