Former Freshworks SVP to lead product strategy as BigPanda continues to bring agentic AI to enterprise IT operations
REDWOOD CITY, Calif., January 20, 2026- BigPanda, a leading provider of agentic IT operations solutions, today announced the appointment of Venkat Balasubramanian as Chief Product Officer. Balasubramanian brings more than two decades of product leadership experience scaling IT service management and IT operations platforms, having grown Freshworks’ Freshservice to more than $450 million in annual recurring revenue.
As CPO, Balasubramanian will lead product strategy as BigPanda continues to transform reactive, manual IT processes into proactive, intelligent automation. His proven track record in building products for enterprise IT operations teams and scaling platforms through rapid growth will enable BigPanda to accelerate our mission to use agentic AI to detect, respond to, and prevent IT incidents at machine speed.
“Venkat combines a bold vision for what agentic ITOps can become, and a proven playbook for scaling products from launch to half a billion in ARR,” said Assaf Resnick, CEO and Co-Founder of BigPanda. “He’s spent the last decade building the platforms that IT operations teams depend on. That customer empathy, paired with his track record of execution, makes him the perfect leader to take BigPanda into its next chapter.”
At Freshworks, Balasubramanian served as Senior Vice President of Product Management and General Manager of Freshservice, where he led global, cross-functional teams of over 600 people across product, design, engineering, and data science. Under his leadership, Freshservice evolved from an IT service desk into a comprehensive, AI-powered ITSM platform trusted by over 18,000 enterprises to manage complex IT environments. He grew the business 100X to become Freshworks’ largest division and was part of the leadership team that took the company public on Nasdaq (FRSH) in 2021.
“I’m incredibly excited to join BigPanda as Chief Product Officer,” said Balasubramanian. “The shift to agentic AI represents the most significant opportunity to transform IT operations in decades. I look forward to working with the BigPanda team to deliver on our vision for an Agentic ITOps platform that improves operational efficiency and exceptional service reliability by using AI to detect, respond to, and prevent IT incidents at machine speed.
Balasubramanian holds an MBA in Strategy and Entrepreneurship from the NYU Stern School of Business and an MS in Human-Computer Interaction from Virginia Tech. He will be based in the San Francisco Bay Area.
About BigPanda
BigPanda delivers agentic automation for ITOps. We enable enterprises to keep the digital world running by transforming manual and reactive human processes into intelligent, autonomous systems that detect, respond, and prevent IT incidents at machine speed. That’s why the world’s most trusted brands rely on BigPanda to improve operational efficiency and deliver exceptional service reliability to their customers.
Learn more at www.bigpanda.io.
Media Contact:
Adam Blau
VP of Product Marketing
adam@bigpanda.io
