Ashwin Ballal

Chief Information Officer Freshworks

Last Reviewed: September 19, 2026

Executive Summary

Ashwin Ballal is Chief Information Officer of Freshworks, the customer experience, CRM and IT service management software company listed on NASDAQ as FRSH, a role he took up in May 2024. He oversees all aspects of the company’s IT infrastructure, systems and operations — which at a company that sells IT service management software carries an unusual double weight, since Freshworks’ own internal deployment is also a reference implementation. His route into technology leadership is not the usual one: he holds a doctorate in materials science and engineering and began with an undergraduate degree in metallurgy, before more than three decades in technology and business strategy that took him through the chief information, intelligence and data officer role at the semiconductor equipment maker KLA Corporation and then the CIO seat at the experience management company Medallia.

Career Highlights

• Appointed Chief Information Officer of Freshworks in May 2024, with responsibility for all aspects of IT infrastructure, systems and operations (Freshworks company news, 13 May 2024).
• Succeeded Prasad Ramakrishnan, who retired from Freshworks at the end of that quarter after six years, with the two working together on the handover (Freshworks company news).
• As EVP and Chief Information Officer at Medallia, led and transformed IT and security, workplace services, corporate procurement and travel (Freshworks company news).
• Served as Chief Information, Intelligence, and Data Officer of KLA Corporation, a combined remit spanning IT, analytics and data (Freshworks company news).
• Past recipient of the HMG Strategy Transformational CIO Award and of the CIO 100 Award from CIO Magazine (Freshworks company news).
• Opening interviewee in Freshworks’ four-part guide ‘The AI-empowered CIO’, in which he argued that “AI has pushed the CIO out of the back office and into the front office” and that the biggest implementation challenge is setting guardrails around data quality and privacy (Freshworks, 13 May 2025).

Professional Journey

Ballal trained as a materials scientist — an undergraduate degree in metallurgy at the National Institute of Technology Karnataka, then a doctorate and postdoctoral research in materials science at the University of Maryland, College Park. The discipline shows up in how his employers describe his subsequent work: large-scale transformation programmes rather than incremental IT administration.

His first named senior role in the record is at KLA Corporation, the semiconductor process control company, as Chief Information, Intelligence, and Data Officer. The title is notable in itself — a combined IT, intelligence and data mandate was unusual at the time and prefigures the direction the CIO role has since taken. He moved from there to Medallia, the customer and employee experience management company, as Executive Vice President and Chief Information Officer, where his remit went well past systems: IT and security, workplace services, corporate procurement and travel.

Freshworks announced his hire on 13 May 2024. His predecessor Prasad Ramakrishnan was retiring after six years, and the announcement framed the appointment around scale and transformation — implementing strategic IT initiatives, setting vision and strategy, and executing for hyper-scale growth, in Ramakrishnan’s words. Ballal’s own emphasis on joining was generative AI, which he framed not as a competitive necessity but as a way of “redefining operational excellence and elevating the employee experience”.

A year into the job, Freshworks used him as the opening voice in a guide on the AI-era CIO. His arguments there are worth recording because they are his own rather than an employer’s summary: that the role demands curiosity and adaptability or “you’ll be left behind”; that AI has moved the CIO from operations into strategic direction-setting; that too often “AI is a solution looking for a problem”; and that empathy is a two-way leadership requirement rather than a soft extra.

Education

University of Maryland, College Park

Ph.D., Materials Science and Engineering

National Institute of Technology Karnataka (NITK)

Bachelor’s degree, Metallurgy

Freshworks’ announcement also credits him with “a postdoctoral degree in material science” from the University of Maryland. Postdoctoral work is a research appointment rather than a degree, so it is recorded here as research and is not listed above.