Freshworks founder Girish Mathrubootham has stepped down from his role as executive chairman, marking a major leadership transition at the Nasdaq-listed SaaS company he built from scratch.
He had transitioned from the chief executive role (CEO) to the board position after Dennis Woodside stepped in as CEO in May 2024.
Mathrubootham started Freshworks in 2010 from a small office in Chennai with what he described as “a dream, borrowed furniture, and a belief that India could build world-class software for the world.”
Freshworks reached unicorn status in 2018 and became the first Indian SaaS company to go public on Nasdaq in September 2021.
Over the past 15 years, the company has grown into a global customer engagement and IT service management platform serving thousands of clients, with a public listing on the Nasdaq in 2021.
Roxanne Austin, a longtime board member, will take over as chairperson of the Freshworks board. Austin is the president and chief executive at the eponymous firm Austin Investment Advisors. She has been on the board of Freshworks for more than four years.
Looking ahead, Mathrubootham plans to dedicate his time to Together Fund, the venture capital firm he co-founded to back early-stage startups, along with Eka Software founder Manav Garg and Matrix Partners and Accel executives, Shubham Gupta and Avinash Raghava. The VC firm invests in areas such as SaaS, enterprise software, developer tools, open source software, cloud-native infrastructure and API-first businesses, along with generative AI.
His focus will be on the next wave of artificial intelligence companies. “I believe the world is at the beginning of a new era, and India has the talent and ambition to become a true Product Nation. That is the dream I want to dedicate my energy to,” he said.
Before Freshworks, Mathrubootham served as vice president of product management at ManageEngine (Zoho), where he was involved in product strategy, support, and marketing. He also co-founded CustomerAsset, an outsourced customer support firm.