Freshworks strengthens top deck with CRO appointment

Chennai-based customer engagement software-as-a-service (SaaS) company Freshworks has appointed Jose Morales as chief revenue officer (CRO). 

In his previous appointment, Morales served as the head of global field operations for software firm, Atlassian Corporation.

Morales will take over from Sidharth Malik, who has been elevated to the role of chairman at Freshworks India. Malik who joined Freshworks from Akamai in 2017 will align sales, product and engineering in India. 

In his new role, Morales will lead the sales and go-to-market teams with over 1000 employees and will report to the CEO, Girish Mathrubootham. 

“Similar to my prior experience, Freshworks products are ideal for bottom-up adoption. They are affordable, easy to deploy and intuitive. Yet, they are also robust and can be scaled across the enterprise as the company standard — a significant departure from traditional product capabilities,” Morales said in a statement. 

During his 10 year term at Atlassian, Morales grew the company’s revenue from under $100 million to nearly $1.8 billion annual run rate. He was a part of Atlassian when it went public in 2015.

The appointment is also crucial as Freshworks CEO Girish  Mathrubootham has previously said that the company was going to IPO in 2021. The company had last raised $85 million in a secondary transaction from Steadview Capital in July. The firm was valued at $3.5 billion in an equity round of funding in November 2019 led by returning investors Sequoia Capital, Accel and CapitalG. 

“Having led Atlassian’s success through its IPO in 2015, José brings a wealth of experience driving global and public sales organizations, which will be critical as Freshworks embarks on its next chapter,” said Girish Mathrubootham, CEO of Freshworks in the statement.

The appointment is the latest in a series of senior executives hired by the SaaS unicorn in 2020, including chief financial officer Tyler Sloat and chief customer officer Pradeep Rathinam.