Freehand names Krshna Prashant as first US Marketing Lead

Freehand has appointed Krshna Prashant as its first US marketing lead following its recent US$75 million seed funding round.

Based in San Francisco, Prashant is the supply-chain AI company's first marketing hire in the US. She will build Freehand's brand, narrative and go-to-market function as it expands its presence among large corporate customers.

The appointment comes as Freehand pushes further into the US market after securing backing from Battery Ventures, NewRoad Capital Partners, PSP Growth and Nexus Venture Partners. Its AI agents already manage supply-chain spend for major businesses including Meta, Johnson & Johnson, Dunkin', Pfizer and Cardinal Health.

Freehand's systems also process billions of dollars in payments across 60 to 70 countries. The company focuses on procurement, supplier management, invoicing and payment operations for large enterprises.

Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer Nitin Jayakrishnan said Freehand had looked beyond the traditional business software sector for the role.

"We deliberately went looking for someone from the B2C world. The best consumer marketers know how to make people feel something and act, and that instinct is exactly what enterprise software has been missing. Krshna has done that at scale across two continents. Bringing a B2C sensibility to B2B is how we intend to build a brand people remember, not just a product they buy," Jayakrishnan said.

Prashant joins after working across Europe and Southeast Asia in consumer and technology marketing roles. Most recently, she was Head of Campaigns for EU & Turkey at Delivery Hero, where she oversaw product adoption and co-marketing across more than seven European markets and managed a multi-million-euro promotional budget.

Before that, she was Head of Marketing at Flash Coffee in Singapore, where she led marketing during more than 30 store launches and managed a nine-person team. Earlier in her career, she worked at Uber on CRM and in-app communications for UberPOOL and driver lifecycle initiatives, then joined Grab as Brand Marketing Manager for Southeast Asia.

At Grab, Prashant led the campaign for the company's first ESG and social impact report, which won Silver at the WARC Prize for Asian Strategy. According to Freehand, the campaign used customer data and mobile technology to personalise reporting on social impact across Southeast Asia.

Brand build

For Freehand, the new marketing role marks a shift from product development and fundraising towards brand building as competition among AI companies intensifies. Businesses in the sector are competing not only on product performance and customer wins, but also on how they explain their use of AI to large enterprises that often buy cautiously through long procurement cycles.

Prashant's role is to define how Freehand presents itself as what it describes as a category-creating AI company. Its pitch centres on software agents that can make decisions and take actions inside enterprise systems, replacing some work traditionally handled by legacy software and outsourced teams.

Prashant described the role as a chance to shape how that story is told.

"Freehand is doing something that has never been done at this scale: replacing legacy software and outsourced labor with AI Teams that actually make decisions and take action inside enterprise systems. My job is to give that a voice. As the first marketing hire in the U.S., this is a rare chance to build a category, not just market a product," Prashant said.

Prashant holds a BBA with a double major in marketing and strategy from Singapore Management University. Freehand is headquartered in San Francisco.