Indian SaaS firm Freshworks lays off 90 employees

NEW DELHI: Indian software-as-a-service (SaaS) company Freshworks has laid off nearly 90 employees, or 2 per cent of its total workforce, citing rough global conditions behind the move.

The company's Founder and CEO Girish Mathrubootham told employees in an email that this is not a company-wide layoff but "a structural change".

"In all the changes we undertook we have deployed and retained the majority of our teammates, however a few around 2 per cent of 5,200 people or approximately 90 employees for whom we do not have a readily available open position," Mathrubootham wrote in the email.

The CEO said that Freshworks will help impacted employees by providing them healthcare coverage and outplacement services.

"While we have reported a strong quarter, we are not immune to this slower economy. While new businesses picked up, expansion slowed down even as we reduced our growth forecasts and headcount needs," he wrote.

Freshworks joins a growing list of tech companies that have laid off employees amid global macro-economic conditions.

The Nasdaq-listed firm was valued at $12.2 billion after it opened 21 per cent above the initial offering price of $36 apiece in September last year.

Mathrubootham, in interviews with media outlets, highlighted that the IPO created a lot of wealth for its employees as more than 500 of its employees turned crorepatis (millionaires). He further added that about 70, of these 500 employees, are under the age of 30.

The company was valued at $3.5 billion when it raised $150 million funding from investors like Sequoia Capital, CapitalG and Accel in November 2019.

Founded by Mathrubootham and Shan Krishnasamy as Freshdesk in Chennai in 2010, the company started its journey as a helpdesk software for customer support. It decided to rebrand itself to Freshworks in June 2017 to incorporate the company's growing software suite.