Freshworks ropes in new CTO after two years

Freshworks, a Chennai and California-based software-as-a-service (SaaS) company, on Tuesday, announced the appointment of Murali Swaminathan as its Chief Technology Officer (CTO), a role in which Murali will be responsible for Freshworks’ technology roadmap and strategy, leading the company’s global engineering and architecture teams.
 
Swaminathan stepped into this role two years after the firm’s co-founder and CTO Shan Krishnaswamy left the company in September 2022. Krishnasamy, who has decided to take a career break after 11 years with the Nasdaq-listed firm, had handed his responsibilities to chief product officer (CPO) Prakash Ramamurthy who leads both product and engineering teams.
 
In his new role Swaminathan will lead the company’s investment in talent and IT resources to enhance employee and customer experience solutions. He joins the executive management team and will report to Chief Executive Officer and President Dennis Woodside.
 
With over 30 years of experience in software engineering and management, Swaminathan brings a wealth of knowledge and a proven track record of delivering high-quality, scalable, and secure products. Murali joins Freshworks from ServiceNow, where he served as Vice President of Engineering, overseeing the company’s market-leading IT Service Management and Strategic Portfolio Management portfolio of products that scale to work for large enterprises.
 
Woodside said, “Swaminathan’s experience aligns exceptionally well with our commitment to deliver products that provide rapid impact and real returns on artificial intelligence (AI) investment, and his leadership in employee experience is particularly valuable as we become the platform of choice for enabling mid-market and enterprise customers to compete at global scale.”
 
During his tenure at ServiceNow, Swaminathan was instrumental in building the modern application architecture that underpins the company's IT Service Management and Strategic Portfolio Management products. These products have generated billions of dollars in revenue and have been adopted by thousands of customers worldwide.
 
Before ServiceNow, he served as Vice President of Engineering at Recommind (now OpenText). Before that, he held several key positions at CA Technologies (now part of Broadcom Inc.), where he played a critical role in advancing the company's enterprise software solutions.

"It’s an incredible time to be joining this team as we grow to become a multi-billion-dollar software company," said Swaminathan. "Our talented global engineering and architecture teams are pivotal to meeting this goal and I look forward to working with them to continue driving innovation and delivering exceptional products that meet the evolving needs of our customers."
 
He holds a master’s degree in Software Engineering Management from Carnegie Mellon University and a bachelor’s degree in electronics and instrumentation from Annamalai University in India.
 
To be sure, the company has seen a slew of management changes within the SaaS firm over the past six to eight months.
 
Last month, CPO Ramamurthy resigned from the software firm. According to an SEC filing on August 14, Ramamurthy will assist the newly appointed CEO Woodside, till October 1 to ensure a smooth transition.
 
The CPO's exit comes four months after the firm announced an internal rejig wherein, Girish Mathrubootham, who was the chief executive officer (CEO) had become the executive chairman of the company while Woodside became the CEO.
 
Around that time, the company said in an SEC filing that Tyler Sloat, who was previously serving as both principal financial officer and principal accounting officer, will continue serving as the Company’s principal financial officer. It has also hired Philippa Lawrence as the Chief Accounting Officer.
 
Pradeep Rathinam, the chief revenue officer (CRO) of Freshworks, also resigned from the firm earlier this year in February.
 
The firm appointed former Adobe and F5 executive Mika Yamamoto as its first chief customer and marketing officer (CCMO), last year. Freshworks also appointed Johanna Jackman as the new Chief People Officer (CPO).