Hemanth Puttaswamy

CEO and Co-Founder Malbek

Last Reviewed: September 19, 2026

Executive Summary

Hemanth Puttaswamy co-founded Malbek with Matt Patel and runs it as Chief Executive Officer. The company sells contract lifecycle management software, but its more interesting claim is what it does after the contract is signed. Enterprises accumulate thousands of executed agreements containing obligations, pricing terms, renewal dates and risk exposures that nobody can query, because the contracts sit as documents rather than as data. Malbek pairs conventional CLM workflow with what it calls a commercial intelligence platform — AI extraction, BusinessIQ analytics, the Klix clickwrap product and an integrations marketplace — and sells it to sales, procurement and finance teams as much as to legal departments. The strategy has held up against much larger competitors: Gartner named Malbek a Leader in its 2025 Magic Quadrant for Contract Life Cycle Management, and the company reported the highest composite satisfaction score in SoftwareReviews’ CLM category at 8.3 out of 10. Puttaswamy came to it after more than two decades in enterprise software, building and scaling SaaS products at Saba and at Revitas, now part of Model N.

Career Highlights

• Co-founded Malbek with Matt Patel, who serves as Chief Operating Officer, and leads the company as Chief Executive Officer.
• Named a Leader in Gartner’s 2025 Magic Quadrant for Contract Life Cycle Management.
• Recorded the highest composite satisfaction score in SoftwareReviews’ CLM category, 8.3 out of 10.
• Extended the product from contract workflow into a commercial intelligence platform spanning Malbek AI, BusinessIQ, Klix clickwrap and an integrations marketplace.
• Positioned Malbek across sales, legal, procurement and finance, with industry depth in life sciences, manufacturing, consumer packaged goods and retail.
• Reports a 120% customer retention rate, implying net expansion within the installed base.
• Built a global organisation including a dedicated Malbek India operation with its own general manager.
• Spent over two decades developing and scaling enterprise-grade SaaS at Saba and at Revitas before founding Malbek.

Professional Journey

Puttaswamy’s background is in enterprise software delivery rather than in law, which shapes how Malbek approaches a market that is usually addressed from the legal side. He took an MBA at San José State University and spent more than twenty years in enterprise SaaS. At Saba, the learning and talent management company, and then at Revitas — a revenue management and contract pricing business later acquired by Model N — he led teams building and scaling enterprise-grade SaaS products. Revitas is particularly relevant: its business was the commercial terms embedded in contracts, especially in life sciences, where rebate, chargeback and pricing agreements are complex enough to constitute a discipline of their own. That is the same substance Malbek works with, approached from a different angle.

He co-founded Malbek with Matt Patel, who is the company’s chief operating officer. The founding thesis was that contract lifecycle management had been built for the legal department and therefore optimised for the wrong thing. Legal cares about drafting, approval and risk; the rest of the business cares about what the contract commits it to and what it is owed. A CLM system built only for legal produces a well-governed repository that no other function can use.

Malbek’s answer is to layer intelligence on top of the workflow. AI extraction turns executed agreements into structured obligations and terms; BusinessIQ makes that estate analysable; Klix handles clickwrap agreements at volume; and a marketplace connects the system to the CRM, ERP and procurement tools where the commercial work actually happens. The company sells across sales, legal, procurement and finance, with vertical depth in life sciences, manufacturing, consumer packaged goods and retail — the industries where contract complexity is highest.

Independent assessment has been favourable. Gartner placed Malbek in the Leaders quadrant of its 2025 Magic Quadrant for Contract Life Cycle Management, a notable position for an independent company in a category containing considerably larger vendors, and SoftwareReviews recorded it at the top of its category on composite satisfaction at 8.3 out of 10. The company reports customer retention of 120%, a figure that implies existing customers are expanding their spend rather than merely renewing it.

Puttaswamy describes himself as a hands-on leader and frames his own contribution around people rather than product — building a collaborative environment in which talent and ideas can develop — while his stated expertise spans product strategy, engineering and business growth. The organisation he has built includes a general counsel who is himself a prominent voice in legal technology, and a substantial India operation under its own general manager.

Education

San José State University

MBA. No year is recorded in any source, and note that Malbek’s own biography page renders the institution as “San José University”, which is not a real institution name; San José State is the near-certain intended reading.