How Freshworks evolved into its modern technology business

Freshworks began in Chennai on 13 October 2010 as Freshdesk, founded by Girish Mathrubootham and Shan Krishnasamy to build cloud customer-support software.

How Freshworks developed

The company added products for IT service management, sales and communications and renamed itself Freshworks in 2017 to reflect the wider portfolio. It became publicly traded on Nasdaq in 2021.

Freshworks in 2026

By 2026, Freshworks offered SaaS products for customer support, IT service management, sales and employee-service workflows, with AI increasingly embedded across its software.

Why the history matters

Freshworks is significant as an Indian-founded SaaS company that expanded globally by targeting business software categories often dominated by much larger US enterprise vendors.

This profile was checked against company disclosures, regulatory filings and reputable independent or industry sources where applicable. Information reflects public material available on 18 September 2026.