Sridhar Vembu, Founder & CEO of Zoho, has swiped at Freshworks over its latest round of layoffs.
Last week, Zoho’s CRM market rival cut 660 roles, trimming its workforce by 13 percent.
Freshworks shared the announcement during an earnings call with investors. There, it also revealed "strong" revenue growth of 22 percent year-over-year (YoY).
Nevertheless, Dennis Woodside, CEO of Freshworks, justified the cuts as an attempt to "streamline" the company and fixate on its employee experience, AI, and customer experience businesses.
Woodside described these areas as the company’s three strategic imperatives.
Additionally, he promised affected employees multiple forms of relief, including severance pay based on tenure, extended healthcare coverage, and even immigration support where needed.
However, Vembu dealt a thinly-veiled blow to Freshworks.
"This is naked greed, nothing less," he said in a post on X.
He also questioned the long-term impact of the move, noting: "[Freshworks] should not expect any loyalty from its employees ever."
From there, the CEO accuses Freshworks of lacking empathy, vision, and imagination in not finding an alternative solution.
Closing up, he claimed that, as a private company, Zoho puts its customers and employees first, not the shareholders, who – in his opinion – should come last. The full post is available below.
A company that has $1 billion cash, which is about 1.5 times its annual revenue, and is actually still growing at a decent 20% rate and making a cash profit, laying off 12-13% of its workforce should not expect any loyalty from its employees ever. And to add insult to injury,…
— Sridhar Vembu (@svembu) November 7, 2024
