Dive Brief:
- Freshworks hired Kuntal Vahalia as SVP of partnerships channel amid a push for relationships with the global system integrators, the company said in an announcement Thursday.
- Vahalia joined three months after Laura Padilla, SVP of global channel and emerging market sales, departed to lead the channel at Okta, and one year after the enterprise software provider announced a new program centered on resellers and service providers.
- The company intends to activate partnerships with GSIs as it moves up-market with its employee experience segment. “Partners are a core pillar of our growth strategy as we continue to scale upmarket and expand globally,” Freshworks CRO Ian Tickle said.
Dive Insight:
GSIs play closely with enterprise customers, which Freshworks has been targeting in the last two years. The company wants to lure customers to its CRM and IT management offerings from BMC, Ivanti and ServiceNow as those contracts come up for renewal, CEO, President and Director Dennis Woodside said in the company’s Q4 2025 earnings.
“[Midsize enterprise customers] are seeing all the customer references that we now have from large meaningful companies that have made the switch,” Woodside said “They're talking to the CIOs of those companies that have made the switch.”
With its eye on enterprise customers, Freshworks has become more selective with its large partner base, Woodside said March 4 at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media & Telecom Conference 2026.
“Historically, we had lots of partners that were more at the SMB end of the market. Those are still important. But increasingly, investment is around partners like Unisys, which have a much bigger customer base. They have a lot of mid-market customers. Those mid-market customers are open to considering a different solution than what they have now, and they're building a business around our product,” Woodside said.
Freshworks accelerated its GSI play last year with a track that directs its sales staff to share leads with service delivery partners, who are trained and certified on the software.
Vahalia worked closely with GSIs at previous software employers, including Salesforce, Mulesoft and most recently Anaplan.
“We’re building strong momentum across our channel as partners increasingly invest in Freshworks to develop scalable, services-led practices,” Vahalia said. “The opportunity ahead is significant — partners want solutions they can confidently grow with, and Freshworks is uniquely positioned to deliver differentiated, fast time-to-value offerings aligned to high-growth segments.”
The company’s employee experience business includes IT service management, IT operations management and enterprise service management. The segment grew 26% year over year to $500 million in annualized recurring revenue in Q4 2025.
Vahalia will lead the company in the next phase of its partner ecosystem growth, Tickle said. “Kuntal brings deep ecosystem experience that will help us expand into larger markets and build even stronger relationships with global system integrators. His proven ability to scale partner-led growth makes him ideal to lead this next chapter for Freshworks.”
