Freshworks Lays Off Around 90 Employees

Freshworks laid off employees across product, marketing, and sales verticals, making organisational changes as part of a restructuring exercise.

“To fuel our business growth, we made organisational changes to create better alignment across the company. We shifted some existing roles in product, marketing and sales to support more critical initiatives and reduced the need for a small number of others – less than 2% of our workforce. Freshworks did not do a company-wide layoff," a company spokesperson said.

Shares of Freshworks slumped 3.43% on Thursday to close at $14.63 apiece.

In India, the number of impacted Freshworks employees stands at 60, which is close to 1% of the company’s 5,500-strong global workforce.

The past few months have been tough for the global tech industry. Tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite index is down more than 31% this year, eroding the wealth of investors of several large corporates.

With investor sentiment hammered, tech firms have been cutting costs to ensure a longer runway. Layoffs have been rampant as companies strive to conserve cash and protect profit margins.

In 2022, global tech giants such as Meta (Facebook), Twitter, and Amazon as well as Indian SaaS companies such as Chargebee, Clear, and FarEye, among others, have reduced their headcount.

Last month, Tiger Global-Chargebee laid off around 10% of its workforce or 142 employees. The move was taken to tackle the ongoing macroeconomic challenges as well as reduce the debt it has accumulated in the last few years, Chargebee cofounder Krish Subramanian had said.

Also, logistics SaaS startup FarEye laid off around 250 of its employees in June. The company had to make some hard decisions to reduce its team across operations and services, Kushal Nahata, chief executive officer and co-founder, FarEye, had then said.

However, some companies in the SaaS space are trying to cut other costs to save the jobs of their employees. For instance, Freshworks‘ rival Zoho plans to lower its marketing costs to mitigate the impact of the unfavourable macroeconomic situation, instead of letting go of its employees.

“We’re optimistic for the next few years but at the same time realistic due to the ongoing market conditions," Zoho co-founder and chief executive officer Sridhar Vembu said in an interaction with VCCircle last month.