‘India is super important for us’: Freshworks CEO on harnessing engineering talent

Freshworks CEO Dennis Woodside believes leveraging India's vast engineering and software talent remains crucial for the software-as-a-service (SaaS) provider to innovate and expand globally.

“A vast majority of our team is in India. We have over 3,800 employees here spread across Hyderabad, Bengaluru, and Chennai. We built virtually all of our products—almost all of our code—here in India. That’s very unique,” Woodside says in an exclusive interaction with YourStory. 

Freshworks' strategy of basing the bulk of its engineering and product work out of India allows the firm to benefit from the nation’s deep energy for software development. This, according to Woodside, gives the Nasdaq-listed company an edge over most international companies that only have a portion of their product development in India.

“India is super important for us,” Woodside notes. “We’ve really tapped into the talent that India has, the energy that India has, and the passion India has for software.”

Beyond being a development hub for Freshworks, India is also a crucial market in the CX (customer experience) segment to assist customers with vast user bases—PhonePe being a prominent example. “We’ve been able to scale to support customers with millions of interactions with their end customers,” he says. 

Freshworks is also bullish on nurturing the nation’s talent and providing pathways for professional growth. Woodside explains that each year, several learners, often from areas outside metropolitan Chennai, apply to join the company’s Freshworks STS Software Academy to equip underprivileged high school graduates with advanced tech skills. 

“Our STS Academy is special,” shares Woodside. “When I come to India, I make a point of meeting the students. Many of our employees have gone through this academy programme. We’re in our fourth class, and each year, we welcome a new cohort—this year, it’s about 90 people. Altogether, we’ve graduated close to 200 students so far.”

Over 70 graduates have already joined Freshworks in full-time positions, and others have secured roles at different tech companies in Chennai.

“It’s a really special programme because it transforms the futures of people who might otherwise struggle to make ends meet. They’re now earning global wages. Some have quickly moved into managerial roles, leading teams,” Woodside adds.

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AI advantage

Freshworks’ growth has been fueled by its latest AI offerings, most notably Freddy AI, an easy-to-deploy autonomous service agent built to enhance CX and employee experience. 

Launched in February last year, the AI-driven tool has gained significant traction and has already attracted over 1,700 paying customers by the end of the third quarter, according to the CEO.

“A big driver of our growth this year has been AI. Our Freddy Copilot product, in particular, is resonating with our customers. That’s a pretty fast grant for a new product in the market—it just shows the built-in demand for AI. We’ve been able to scale to support customers with millions of interactions with their end customers,” Woodside says. 

Several traditional SaaS firms today are pivoting towards incorporating AI into their solutions to derive better ROI for their customers. Woodside explains that AI agents experience, on average, a 30% improvement in productivity. 

The primary draw of Freddy Copilot is its potential to deliver productivity gains for customer support agents.

“If a customer’s agent gets a complex question, in a traditional service centre, that agent would spend a lot of time researching the answer. With Freddy AI, as soon as the agent gets the question, there’s an answer suggested by the AI—it’s already done the research for them. That saves a ton of time and makes the agent more confident in answering," he notes.

"AI is a huge tailwind and a huge driver of our business and that's going to propel us towards the billion-dollar goal,” he says.