Automation Anywhere vs Freshworks: Founders, CEOs and History

Company facts

Founders

CEOs and their tenures

Timeline: Automation Anywhere and Freshworks side by side

1. 2003Automation Anywhere

   Incorporation as Tethys Solutions in San Jose: Mihir Shukla, Neeti Mehta Shukla, Ankur Kothari and Rushabh Parmani incorporated Tethys Solutions, LLC in San Jose, California, selling software that rec…

2. 2010Automation Anywhere

   Renamed Automation Anywhere, Inc.: The company rebranded from Tethys Solutions to Automation Anywhere, Inc.

3. 2010Freshworks

   Freshdesk Founded in Chennai

   Girish Mathrubootham and Shan Krishnasamy founded Freshdesk in an 800 sq ft office in Chennai, building an affordable cloud customer ticketing system.

4. 2011Freshworks

   First Customer Won & Accel Seed Funding

   Launched Freshdesk commercially and raised a $1 million Series A led by Accel India.

5. 2014Freshworks

   Launch of Freshservice ITSM

   Introduced Freshservice to provide internal IT helpdesk and service management, which rapidly expanded into its largest enterprise revenue engine.

6. 2016Freshworks

   Freshsales Launched

   Freshdesk launched the Freshsales CRM product in 2016.

7. 2017Automation Anywhere

   First Imagine customer conference: Automation Anywhere held its first Imagine customer and partner event in New York on May 24 and 25, 2017, and ran a second Imagine in Bengaluru in September of the s…

8. 2017Freshworks

   Company Rebranded to Freshworks

   Rebranded from Freshdesk to Freshworks to reflect its multi-product suite spanning customer support, IT service, and sales CRM.

9. 2018Automation Anywhere

   Bot Store opens as an RPA bot marketplace: Launched in London in March 2018, Bot Store offered prebuilt, plug and play bots from Automation Anywhere and partners including EY and Genpact, cutting the…

10. 2018Automation Anywhere

    $250M Series A at a $1.8B valuation: After fifteen years without institutional equity, the company raised $250 million on July 2, 2018 led by New Enterprise Associates and Goldman Sachs Growth Equity,…

11. 2018Automation Anywhere

    SoftBank Vision Fund adds $300M: In November 2018 the SoftBank Vision Fund invested $300 million as an extension of the Series A, taking the round to $550 million and the post-money valuation to $2.6…

12. 2018Freshworks

    San Mateo Headquarters and Unicorn Status

    Raised a $100 million round led by Accel and Sequoia Capital at a valuation reported above $1.5 billion, and set up headquarters in San Mateo, California.

13. 2019Automation Anywhere

    Acquisition of Klevops in Paris: Automation Anywhere acquired Klevops SAS of Paris in August 2019 to orchestrate work between employees and bots, the technology behind the attended automation interfac…

14. 2019Automation Anywhere

    Enterprise A2019 launches as a web-based platform: In October 2019 the company shipped Enterprise A2019, a cloud-native browser-based rewrite that it said added more than 175 features across 40 produc…

15. 2019Automation Anywhere

    $290M Series B at a $6.8B valuation: Salesforce Ventures led a $290 million Series B announced on November 21, 2019, with SoftBank Investment Advisers and Goldman Sachs participating, at a $6.8 billio…

16. 2020Automation Anywhere

    Pandemic restructuring and workforce reduction: In April 2020 Automation Anywhere cut jobs and restructured parts of the company, saying the COVID-19 pandemic and the change it brought to the global e…

17. 2021Automation Anywhere

    Enterprise A2019 rebranded Automation 360: In March 2021 the company introduced Automation 360 as the brand for its unified cloud-native platform and widened deployment across AWS, Microsoft Azure and…

18. 2021Automation Anywhere

    Acquisition of FortressIQ for process discovery: Announced in December 2021, the FortressIQ deal added computer vision process discovery that maps how work is done across applications and turns it int…

19. 2021Freshworks

    Historic NASDAQ IPO Raising $1.03 Billion

    Listed on NASDAQ under ticker FRSH on September 22, 2021, raising about $1.03 billion; shares closed the first day with a market value above $12 billion.

20. 2023Automation Anywhere

    Start of an unbroken non-GAAP profitable run: The quarter ended October 31, 2023 began the run of non-GAAP profitable quarters with positive free cash flow that the company counted as ten by the quart…

21. 2023Freshworks

    Launch of Freddy AI Generative Suite

    Unveiled Freddy AI, embedding generative AI across Freshservice and Freshdesk to automate ticket summaries, responses, and routine IT tasks.

22. 2024Automation Anywhere

    AI plus Automation Enterprise System and AI Agent Studio: At Imagine 2024 in Austin in June 2024 the company unveiled an AI plus Automation Enterprise System with AI Agent Studio, letting customers bu…

23. 2024Freshworks

    Dennis Woodside Appointed CEO

    President Dennis Woodside became CEO in May 2024, with founder Girish Mathrubootham moving to Executive Chairman. Freshworks also agreed to acquire IT asset discovery company Device42.

24. 2025Automation Anywhere

    Acquisition of Aisera: On November 4, 2025 Automation Anywhere acquired Aisera and its team of more than 100 AI engineers, adding self-service AI agents for IT service management, HR and customer serv…

25. 2025Freshworks

    First GAAP Operating Profit; Founder Exits

    Revenue reached $838.8 million with GAAP operating income of $13.2 million. Girish Mathrubootham left the board on December 1, 2025 and Roxanne Austin became Chair.

26. 2026Automation Anywhere

    OpenAI collaboration and a tenth profitable quarter: Reporting the quarter ended January 31, 2026, Automation Anywhere recorded its tenth consecutive non-GAAP profitable quarter, said AI products were…

27. 2026Freshworks

    Record Q2 and Raised Outlook

    Q2 2026 revenue rose 16% to $237.4 million and full-year guidance was raised to $963.5M-$966.5M, after a May 2026 restructuring that cut about 500 jobs.

Acquisitions

Questions about Automation Anywhere vs Freshworks