How students are helping expand Freshworks Marketplace

What’s one way to expand a growing software platform? Give students an opportunity to build integration apps that make the platform more useful to more people.

A group of Freshworks engineers from the Freshchat product team, eager to expand the developer pool for Freshworks Marketplace, saw an opportunity to put that idea to the test. They’d mentor a group of students from the Freshworks STS Software Academy (FSSA) to build integrations between Freshchat and other SaaS apps and, in the process, give students valuable hands-on experience.

Stephen Marshall, an engineer on the team, saw nothing but upside in working with the academy. “We could expose them to industry practices and cultivate a group of talented developers capable of creating apps for Freshworks,” he said.

The team approached Shyam Anandaraman, who runs FSSA. Six standout students—Alagappan Kumaravel, Elayaraman Ramalingam, Jayaprakash Jaisankar, Kamalesh Srinivasan, Sasi Kumar, and Srikannan Esakkiappan—were handpicked for training.

Technical boot camp 

Kicking off with an introduction to Freshchat, the Freshworks Marketplace ecosystem, and Crayons—a public design system library for JavaScript components—the program then covered more technical aspects like networking fundamentals, generative AI, React.js principles, debugging techniques, and industry coding standards. 

In tandem with Freshworks engineers, the students successfully developed integrations for six apps in the marketplace: Canny, Refiner, FeatureOS, Userback, Savio, and Nightfall DLP. The integrations allow agents to use these products without leaving Freshchat. 

Valuable real-world experience

Reflecting on the experience, FSSA student Jaisankar underscored “the importance of staying current with evolving technology.” Fellow student Srinivasan noted that the program “expanded technical skills and taught valuable lessons in teamwork, time management, and perseverance.”

And the company benefitted, too. 

“It was a beautiful win-win engagement. Our students learned a lot, and we helped achieve app-building goals for the business,” said Anandaraman, from Freshworks’ social impact team.