Freshdesk hires former WalmartLabs exec STS Prasad as engineering head

Cloud-based customer service software provider Freshdesk Inc. has appointed former WalmartLabs executive STS Prasad as its senior vice president of engineering.

Prasad will lead all initiatives related to technology development and oversee infrastructure enhancements to support Freshdesk's growing customer base and product roadmap, the company said in a statement.

The appointment is part of the recent strategic hiring drive by Freshdesk, based in San Francisco and Chennai, to strengthen its leadership team.

In February, Freshdesk appointed Arun Mani as managing director of its European operations and Bobby Jaffari as its vice president of sales for North America.

Girish Mathrubootham, founder and CEO of Freshdesk, said Prasad brings with him an in­depth understanding of startups, being a founder himself. "We are launching new products and experiencing rapid growth across our portfolio of products. In this phase of our growth, his experience in leading large engineering teams and scaling technology will be highly valuable," he added.

Prasad, an IIT Madras alumnus and a postgraduate from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, served as a vice president at WalmartLabs in his previous assignment. At WalmartLabs, he was responsible for the development of Big Data-­driven e-commerce business applications in competitive intelligence, algorithmic pricing, inventory planning, order sourcing and fulfillment optimisation.

Earlier, he worked at Kosmix (acquired by Walmart), Amazon and HCL. In between these professional stints, he co-founded Aventeon, a mobile enterprise solutions startup based out of Seattle.

"My professional focus has been on developing technology platforms and scaling organisations to enable product and customer growth. Freshdesk is growing rapidly in both areas," said Prasad.

Founded in 2010 by former Zoho employees Girish Mathrubootham and Shan Krishnasamy, Freshdesk provides cloud-based customer engagement solutions for companies.

The firm is backed by Tiger Global, Accel Partners and Google Capital, and has raised $94 million to date. In April last year, it had raised $50 million in a Series E round of funding.

Freshdesk has also made five acquisitions over the past year. These are Faridabad-based Memeticlabs Technologies Pvt. Ltd, Pune-based visual collaboration platform Framebench, in-app customer support platform Konotor, social recommendations platform Frilp and video chat software 1Click.io.

In May, the company expanded its geographical presence and set up operations in Berlin, considered Europe's most prominent startup hub.

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