Speaking to Reuters on Tuesday, Woodside said the acquisition strategy aligns with a broader wave of consolidation across the technology sector, driven by rapid adoption of artificial intelligence. According to J.P. Morgan, global mergers and acquisitions volumes rose 39% to $4.3 trillion in 2025, despite lingering uncertainty linked to U.S. tariffs.
Freshworks has been actively evaluating potential targets, particularly in AI and employee experience software. Woodside noted that discussions have taken place with companies across multiple regions, including Israel, Europe, the United States and India. “I probably spoke with 50 companies in the last six months,” he said, underscoring the scale of the company’s search.
Founded in the Indian coastal city of Chennai, Freshworks provides cloud-based enterprise software such as Freshdesk for customer support and Freshservice for IT management, both of which integrate AI capabilities. The company competes with global software giants including Salesforce and ServiceNow.
Woodside highlighted India as a strategic hub for the company, noting that all of Freshworks’ engineering teams are based there. India accounts for roughly 80% of the company’s 4,500 employees, and the CEO said Freshworks would “love” to find its next acquisition target in the country, citing easier integration and operational alignment.
The company, which expects double-digit percentage revenue growth over the next three years, recently announced the acquisition of incident management platform FireHydrant. This followed its $230 million purchase of IT management software firm Device42 last year.
Freshworks disclosed that it holds $813.2 million in cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities, giving it the financial flexibility to pursue “meaningfully larger deals,” though it declined to specify the size of potential acquisitions.
The push comes as AI-native startups increasingly challenge established software-as-a-service (SaaS) players with more personalised and automated solutions. While funding for Indian SaaS startups improved slightly to $1.8 billion in 2024 from $1.3 billion a year earlier, it remains well below the $4.4 billion raised in 2022, according to Venture Intelligence data.
Looking ahead, Woodside said Freshworks will continue expanding its workforce in India, particularly in engineering, product development and design roles, and plans to add engineers through future acquisitions. He did not provide specific hiring numbers.