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Amid a top deck churn, SaaS major Freshworks has appointed former ServiceNow executive Ryan Manning as its new chief product and technology officer. He will be joining the company on August 10. 

Manning will be succeeding CPO Srini Raghavan, who is exiting the company after holding office for about a year. Raghavan is departing to pursue his entrepreneurial journey. Meanwhile, Murali Swaminathan will continue to serve as the CTO at Freshworks and will report to Manning.

“The appointment unifies product and technology strategy under one executive as Freshworks grows its footprint with mid-market and agile enterprises,” the statement added.

Post this appointment, Manning will be responsible for setting  product and technology strategy across Freshworks’ AI, IT and customer experience products. He will supervise the global product roadmap and engineering organisation behind Freshworks’ platform. In this role, he will be directly reporting to CEO Dennis Woodside.

Prior to this, Manning was working as CPO at San Francisco-based IT service company BMC Helix for nearly three years. His portfolio also includes companies like Coupa Software,  FreeAgent CRM, and Dell EMC. 

The development adds to a string of leadership exits at Freshworks. In the past two years, the SaaS giant has witnessed several CXOs exit, with the most significant being CEO and founder Girish Mathrubootham parting ways.

In 2024, Mathrubootham announced his resignation as CEO while continuing to serve as the executive chairman and chairman of its board. Last year in September, he completely exited the companyto devote his efforts to his VC fund, Together Fund.  

Freshworks’ other cofounder and CTO Krishnasamy stepped away in September 2022. In 2024, Freshworks also saw a complete revamp of its top management, including CTO, CPO, chief revenue officer, and its India head as it began repositioning itself for the AI era. 

Back then, the company also underwent a restructuring exercise, laying offaround 600 employees. This rejig particularly impacted the India operations, and positioned the company to execute the AI-led transformation.

On the financial front, the SaaS companyslipped into the red in the first quarter of 2026,posting a net loss of $4.8 Mn from a net profit of $191.4 Mn reported in the previous quarter (Q4 2025). On a YoY basis, loss jumped 3.6X from $1.3 Mn. Meanwhile,its revenue stood at $228.6 Mn during the quarter under review, up 16% from $196.3 Mn in the year-ago quarter. On a sequential basis, revenue grew 2.7% from $222 Mn.

During the financial disclosure in January 2026, Freshworks announced plans to reduce its workforce by 11%, impacting about 500 employees, as it accelerates the adoption of AI across product and engineering functions and automates routine tasks across the organisation. 

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