Few companies rode the SaaS wave as diligently as Freshworks which became the first and only such company from India to list on Nasdaq in September 2021. But that ride is being disrupted by AI today.

India has produced an army of SaaS giants such as Innovaccer, BrowserStack, Chargebee attaining unicorn status, not to mention Zoho, which has gone from strength to strength in the past decade. But none have taken to the global arena as much as Freshworks.

That’s till the age of AI arrived and threatened to displace even the most entrenched SaaS giants. This is exactly where the notion of ‘AI will kill SaaS’ comes from.

Freshworks was not the only company suddenly faced with existential questions. No other technology challenged the core SaaS model as much as GenAI. And then Freshworks had another setback as its two cofounders exited.

While Shan Krishnasamy, the cofounder and CTO quit in September 2022 after over a decade with the company, Girish Mathrubootham — the face of Freshworks — transitioned from CEO to executive chairman in May 2024.

As we wrote at the time, the AI revolution represents a paradigm shift for companies like Freshworks.

“Not only from the point of view of product development and operation but also when it comes to leadership. In fact, Freshworks’ example is just one of the many ways in which AI is transforming software giants and a sign of things to come,” we had said in our review of 2024 for Freshworks.

In the year since then, Mathrubootham has stepped away from most involvement, also stepping down as the executive chairman in December 2025.

The transition, however, did not trigger the kind of shock often associated with founder exits. Instead, it sharpened a more consequential question:

What does Freshworks look like when it is no longer defined by its origin story and when AI is running the world?

Now under CEO Dennis Woodside, Freshworks is forging a new identity. Here’s where the SaaS giant is heading in 2026.

The New Age Of Freshworks

Under Woodside, who took charge in 2024 and now stands firmly at the helm, Freshworks is attempting to answer that question by recasting itself as something more ambitious than a SaaS vendor.

Insiders mention that there are serious attempts underway to amalgamate SaaS, AI, and cloud services, with a specific focus on surviving the post-subscription era, which many believe is coming in a GenAI world.

As SaaS growth slowed down globally after the post-pandemic boom, AI startups began to gather steam.

Radical automation was now available at a fraction of traditional costs, roles were being replaced, but more crucially, GenAI platforms were able to handle tasks that were typically being managed by SaaS.

Freshworks found itself at a crossroads: defend its core, or revamp the business model for the AI age i.e. go from a helpdesk SaaS model to an AI-native platform

Freshworks CEO Woodside has been explicit about this strategic shift in his recent public statements emphasising that the company does not see AI as another add-on feature but as a structural re-architecturing of its products.

While acknowledging the fact that Mathrubootham had set Freshwork on an AI strategic path since 2018, Woodside said in an earlier interview that AI has unlocked a fast-paced transformation over the past two years and led to some consolidation in the SaaS world.

This meant Freshworks had to wind down modules and individual software features that were not adding........

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