In a candid conversation with CXO News and APAC News Network, Sandie Overtveld, SVP, Freshworks APJ + MEA explains how the government and enterprises have adopted their solutions, even as the company bets big on Freddy AI for its GenAI sojourn.
What are the products and services currently in the Freshworks portfolio that are available in India?
Freshworks makes it easy for companies to delight their customers and their employees. Our AI-powered customer and employee-service solutions increase efficiency and improve engagement for companies of all sizes. The result is happier customers and more productive employees. All Freshworks products are quick to implement, affordable, and designed with the end-user in mind. We are committed to delivering great experiences in customer service, ITSM, sales, and marketing.
Customer Service Solution: Â A powerful service and support solution, built for the needs of today, ready to scale for tomorrow.
ITSM: Â A modern and intuitive IT management system that unifies business teams and helps businesses realize fast time-to-value
Sales & Marketing: Â A marketing & sales automation product that helps generate sales-ready leads, amplify multichannel engagement, and drive business impact with AI-powered marketing automation.
What are the use cases of solutions like Freshdesk, Freshchat, Freshsales, Freshservice, and Freshmarketer among others?
For Multichoice, one of Africa’s leading entertainment companies, the challenge was to improve customer service and experience as their existing integrations lacked interoperability. We integrated Freshdesk with their in-house AI-powered chatbot T.U.M.I., and other supporting systems for agents to escalate tickets, resolve customer queries, and more, swiftly under a unified interface. This provided Multichoice with a 360-degree view into customer history and access to touch points across the customer journey.
What is the vertical-wise traction that you are witnessing in India for your SaaS-based customer engagement solutions?
India is a key market for us, being our home ground. We have traditionally seen a lot of interest in our products from digital natives like Dunzo, PhonePe, and other unicorns who are quick to innovate and want the latest and greatest in technology to better serve their customers and employees. These are the customers who grow with us and become larger accounts as they scale.
In recent years, we have seen a growing adoption by established conglomerates like Mahindra & Mahindra and Tata Consumer Products who use our products to serve large teams, customers, and partners spread across the globe. Our products in the customer and employee engagement space are horizontal and scale well across multiple verticals.
What are the use cases of the adoption of Freshworks solutions amongst the PSUs and government organizations in India?
Since 2015, the Indian government has been promoting digital transformation across sectors, through its Digital India initiative. Currently with 1.4 billion internet users in India, the need for quick reverts and resolutions in the PSUs and government organizations is the need of the hour. We stepped in and delivered an active Government e-marketplace (GeM) as a CX/CRM software vendor.
Freshdesk is used by the Central government entities and multiple state government bodies to interact with the public, while Freshservice is used to internally prioritise service requests among teams that handle public problem resolution.
We also implemented Freshdesk and Freshchat for the Police Commissioner of the City of Bhubaneswar to streamline queries via WhatsApp. This was specifically done for over 32,000 registered senior citizens of the State Action Plan for Senior Citizens (SAPSrC) to track and check the status of their queries.
How would Freshworks differentiate itself uniquely from other CRM and customer engagement solution providers operating on both cloud and on-prem models?
We are not a legacy business software – our platform assures better customer relationships and improves employee performance for enterprises, from SMBs to large enterprises that have been supercharged by our technologies. With the ready-to-use AI – Freddy AI, we’ve transformed businesses, helping agents and employees to focus on higher-value tasks, improving operational performance, and providing insights for leaders to make informed decisions.
What are the key pillars on which Freshworks’ GTM strategy rests in India? What are some of the key initiatives under this strategy?
Freshworks has set an ambitious target: reaching $1 billion in revenue by 2026. Here is a breakdown of the key pillars and initiatives that support our strategy in India:
Catering to Business of All Sizes
Freshworks understands the needs of both small and large businesses. We offer user-friendly and affordable solutions that are a perfect fit for the growing Indian digital natives like Dunzo, Purplle, and Winzo. However, we are increasingly seeing larger companies like PhonePe, Mahindra & Mahindra, and Tata Consumer Products prefer our solutions to cater to their large base of customers and employees demonstrating our enterprise capabilities and the scalability of our products. We intend to tap into this and cater to organizations of all sizes.
Tapping into the power of Freddy AI
Freshworks is a frontrunner in integrating AI into its products. We unveiled Freddy, our AI engine as early as 2017, and features like Freddy Self-Service and Copilot enhance customer interactions and streamline agent efficiency. We have a dedicated team of nearly 2,000 AI experts based in India. This team is focused on both deepening existing AI functionalities and broadening them across the entire product suite.
Balancing Global Reach with the Indian Advantage
While India is a crucial market for us, given the home ground advantage, the US and Europe are our primary markets. Our strategic focus lies in balancing Indian advantage with expansion into major international markets. This allows us to leverage talent and market opportunities effectively on a global scale. Our product development, engineering, and implementation engineers are in India, serving the global market.
We aim to solidify our position in the Indian market while simultaneously scaling business to achieve global success.
What is the overall partner ecosystem that Freshworks currently follows in India? How are these differentiated between CSPs, ISVs and SIs?
Freshworks has a robust partner ecosystem that includes a variety of partners who contribute to its functionality. The Freshworks partner program includes over 500 solution partners, 400+ technology partners, 600+ Freshworks for Startups partners, and 20000+ affiliate partners; there are around 1100+ technology apps in the Freshworks Marketplace.
Each of these partners plays a unique role in the Freshworks ecosystem, contributing to its comprehensive suite of customer engagement software. They help extend the functionality of Freshworks’ products, provide specialized services, and enhance the overall customer experience.
Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) make use of the power and modularity of the Freshworks Neo platform to develop applications and solutions that enhance the capabilities of Freshworks products.
System Integrators (SIs) are service providers that specialize in the customization, implementation, and integration of Freshworks solutions within an organization’s system. Both types of partners bring their strengths to the Freshworks ecosystem and help us realize our vision of serving our customers.
How do you see the impact of GenAI adoption among Indian enterprises?
We see immense potential for Gen-AI to revolutionize every industry. Our recent Global AI Workplace Report has showcased that Indians are saving the most time (more than 5 hours) with AI-enabled software in their workplace.
Generative AI is a great tool when it comes to helping today’s coders. For instance, we found with the help of Copilot developers were able to complete their work 50% faster.
With AI taking over the burdens of coding, employees can now focus on innovation and better output that will have a clear business impact.
What are the salient findings of the Freshworks Global AI Workforce Report especially in the context of Indian enterprises?
The report highlights India as a global leader in AI adoption and implementation. 86% of Indian employees have displayed comfort working with AI. This trust is a significant advantage for Indian businesses looking to leverage AI’s potential.
The report also emphasizes the positive impact of AI on Indian workplaces. The IT and Marketing departments have reported a strong return on investment (ROI) from AI, indicating that AI is streamlining processes and boosting productivity. Recognizing the changing landscape, a commendable 70% of Indian workers are actively seeking ways to develop their AI skillsets, demonstrating a proactive approach to the future of work.
Overall, the report paints a positive picture with Indian enterprises seeming well-positioned to capitalize on the potential of AI and stay ahead of the curve.
What are going to be some of the key focus areas for Freshworks in the next few quarters?
On the product front, we are continuing to invest in building out generative AI features across our product lines. Currently, we have over 70 generative AI features that were launched in the last 18 months under Freddy AI which either helps businesses boost self-service in consumers or make customer-facing teams more efficient through Freddy CoPilot. We aim to strengthen our third pillar of Freddy which is Freddy Insights which will help decision-makers in an organization derive insights from large unstructured data.
In terms of business, we will continue to execute on the Freshworks promise to help our customers better serve their customers and employees and find efficiencies using technology.
Rajneesh De, APAC News Network
