Digital Adoption Everywhere: How Whatfix Grew to $75 Million ARR

“We are a GPS for software.” 

That’s how Khadim Batti, co-founder of Whatfix, describes the company.

From starting off as a marketing DIY product for SMBs to pivoting to a digital adoption platform and now recording $75 million in ARR with investors like SoftBank and Sequoia Capital, Whatfix is one of the fastest-growing SaaS companies worldwide.

Digital adoption platforms (DAP) are in demand due to the need for remote training and onboarding after the COVID-19 pandemic. The global DAP market is still emerging but expanding quickly. Fortune Business Insights estimates that the DAP market will grow from $943.6M in 2024 to about $3.66 billion by 2032.

Furthermore, the TAM for digital adoption solutions is considered much larger than the current market, given the low penetration today. Whatfix’s CEO cites a conservative TAM, in the order of $25–30 billion for DAP products​.

That leaves room for immense growth.

Indeed, the company witnessed exponential growth in 2021—tripling its valuation since 2020—by raising $90 million in a Series D round led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2. On September 25th, 2024, it secured another $125 million in a Series E funding round, led by Warburg Pincus with participation from existing investor SoftBank Vision Fund 2.

Whatfix has achieved incredible growth, solidifying its position as a leader in the DAP category. It boasts an impressive global clientele, including Arrow Electronics, Schneider Electric, and Avnet, along with partners like Microsoft, Salesforce, Infosys, and Accenture, who trust Whatfix to accelerate ROI on their technology investments. Supporting 80+ Fortune 500 companies, Whatfix witnessed a 4.5X increase in ARR since its 2021 round, with new products contributing 15% of revenue.

It has 700+ customers (70% Americas, 20% Europe, 10% RoW)—remarkable for a SaaS company that was built in India. Its customers include AutoZone, Experian, Cardinal Health, and Manpower, among other Fortune 500 companies. 

Whatfix is run from 7 offices around the world—India, the US, the UK, Germany, Singapore, and Australia. 

What does Whatfix do?

In a conversation with Shripati Acharya at Prime Venture Partners, Khadim says that more than $750-800 billion worth of enterprise software is sold every year. The enterprises are spending at least $1 billion-$2 billion yearly on such software. The average enterprise uses around 900 different types of software, of which 30% are SaaS tools. 

To realize ROI on their billion-dollar investments, employees must use the software effectively. That’s where Whatfix comes in. It is a digital adoption platform (DAP) that creates an interactive overlay to provide in-context information and guidance to users through real-time training, support, tutorials, and feedback. 

In Khadim’s words, “...ensures that they (users) get the right nudges, the right guidance at the moment of need, on demand in the application, which makes them more productive, and ensures the ROI is realized by the organization.”

With Whatfix, employees do not have to read the user manual, look up Help & Support, or attend training sessions conducted manually. They get the required information, customized to the way their company uses the application, right within the tool at the time and location where they need it.  

From “Fix it” to Whatfix

Khadim and Vara Kumar Namburu (co-founder and Head of R&D and Pre-sales at Whatfix) had met at Huawei Technologies in 2001 and had worked together for nearly 9 years in that company. They had a common vision of building a global product company from India that was centered around innovation. 

In 2010, they launched a self-serve tool called SearchEnabler, which crawled the web, collected different kinds of signals, and provided recommendations to SMBs to enhance their social media and online visibility.

They presumed that small businesses could only afford to pay $20-$30, so they needed a DIY tool. Even though the on-demand tool garnered 100 customers within the first year, there was a problem.

Three years into growing SearchEnabler, the churn was nearly as high as the sign-ups. Small business owners needed extensive hand-holding and support to use the tool effectively.

That’s when the founders created a button called “fix it.”  

When a user clicked the button, it showed the parameters that needed to be fixed on the website or social media handles. 

The tactic worked a bit too well—not only did product engagement increase but customers now wanted to use the button for their end users. 

This is the origin of Whatfix as we know it today. 

Idea Validation: Whatfix Community + Outbound 

Between 2011 and 2013, Khadim and Vara Kumar focused on gaining validation for the idea of Whatfix. They wanted to build for the market rather than validate a solution after engineering it. 

Thus, they built an online community where they crowdsourced information required to create what they called “flows,” i.e. useful and interactive workflows. These “flows” took the form of tutorials and how-to guides—something SMBs were looking for. 

They sent cold emails to SMEs to announce the Whatfix community, which was open for all to use and integrate. However, the content was public.

The founders wanted to engage their customers in the community and the Web for the first month while they refined the product before formally launching it. 

They also sent custom emails to 20-25 SaaS companies and startups in Bangalore each day, asking to meet and demonstrate the product. This outbound marketing approach got them 30-35 demos and 4-5 customers in three months.  

They used a similar approach to contact US companies and get them on phone calls. Among the first 10 customers, 6-7 were from India, 2 were from the United States, and 1 was from France.

Thanks to the community and the initial evangelism, Whatfix won its first few paid customers, including a hospital management system in the United States and a library in France. 

Pivoting to Whatfix

Shutting down SearchEnabler even though it had users paying $40-$50 every month was a big gamble, and the timing wasn’t great, either, because the founders had run out of money. 

In a last-gasp attempt, Khadim withdrew his provident fund and Vara Kumar contributed INR 15 lakhs to prop up Whatfix. They were, however, smart enough to set themselves a deadline—December 2015—to make the new venture work.

In 2014, they joined Rajesh Sawhney’s GSF Accelerator, which enabled them to gain some much-needed experience in Silicon Valley. They realized that they should be pricing Whatfix much higher than they were currently doing. They also got nominated for a global startup Hanhwa competition, DreamPlus Alliance Day, in Seoul, South Korea, and won $300K in funding.

When Helion Venture Partners invested $851K (INR 5.5 crores) in Whatfix in early 2015, their gamble paid off. Being just a two-person team at the time, their pitch to Helion included their core belief:

“65% of people on the Internet want to solve their own problems, they prefer self-service over being told what to do. We simply made it easier to enable this kind of help and instruction in the form of videos and texts in a data-intensive world. Performance support is a multibillion dollar industry with very little innovation happening so far, we just leveraged this fact to our advantage.”

Dreamforce, United States, and Pricing Lessons

After a year of receiving institutional funding, another problem cropped up.

Despite being at $1,30,000-$1,50,000 ARR, Whatfix had a 15%-20% churn. Sales and product stickiness were challenging with SMBs. So, the company had to shift to the enterprise segment. 

However, two factors made this move difficult:

1. Whatfix had to set up a base in the United States with only around $1 million in funds.
2. Whatfix had only 7-8 members on its team. To serve enterprise-level customers, they would have to expand the team—again on meager resources.

Khadim and Vara Kumar spent $30,000 on yet another gamble: three days manning a booth at Dreamforce, a sales conference organized by Salesforce, and speaking to 350-400 business leads.

Khadim relates a funny anecdote about iterating on the price point for enterprise customers of Whatfix. 

He had quoted $8,000 to a representative of a big enterprise company with 1,000 sales personnel on its team. So far, the highest price Whatfix had billed to a customer was $2,000 a year. The representative replied, “Okay, $96,000 looks fine.” 

When Khadim clarified that it was $8,000 a year, the representative exclaimed, “Man, that’s cheap. It’s damn cheap.” 

The experience taught Khadim that enterprise customers were used to paying $5-6 million for a CRM solution. 

But there were more pricing lessons in store.

One of the largest banks in the United States that was spending $20-$30 million per year liked the Whatfix demo and requested a quote. Khadim sent a quote of $75,000. 

However, the bank did not respond and the deal did not go through.

Later, Khadim received news through his contacts that the bank had granted the deal to a rival that had quoted $300,000. Since Whatfix’s quote was minuscule by comparison, the bank felt that the company could not offer the scale and support it required. 

In the bank’s words, “We don’t want to work with a partner who might go bankrupt in 6 to 12 months.”

Thus, Khadim learned that value-based pricing was far more important than the figure. Six months later, he was able to take back the contract from Whatfix’s rival at a better price. 

In 2018, Vara Kumar moved to the United States to focus on pre-sales. 

Around this time, Whatfix roped in Vispi Daver, an investor in MakeMyTrip and CarWale, as Senior VP for sales and business development. His role was to lead the go-to-market motion in the United States. He had been among the early investors in Whatfix in 2014 and has served on its board since 2015. 

Together with Vispi, Vara Kumar met prospects face-to-face and explained the concept of Whatfix. 

Brand Building Strategies

After their Dreamforce conference, Khadim and Vara Kumar employed these methods to raise top-of-the-funnel awareness: 

• Doubling down on industry events and conferences to spread the word about Whatfix 
• Building relationships with analyst companies like Gartner, Forrester, IDC, and Everest Group since Whatfix was a new category, and enterprise teams did not yet have a line item in their budgets for an in-app guidance tool 
• Working to get into the radar of channel partners like Accenture, TCS, Wipro, Deloitte, and Infosys to close deals with enterprise clients
• Building thought leadership and showcasing expertise through whitepapers, buyer’s guides, webinars, podcasts, and website content

Content Marketing Strategies

According to Vara Kumar, Whatfix has heavily invested in content in recent years because people need to become familiar with the DAP category. Also, content has helped the company build its unique narrative that has found resonance with analysts:

“So far, the user believes that they have to adapt to the software. However, can technology become user-savvy instead of users becoming tech-savvy? How can we create a layer on top of technology that understands the users better and makes them more productive?”

Here is a quick look at some of the various content assets of Whatfix:

Whatfix blog

The Whatfix blog comprises how-to guides, checklists, and templates that revolve around driving digital adoption for customers. 

Forbes articles

Whitepapers

As we mentioned previously, Whatfix aims to establish its industry expertise through its authoritative whitepapers. 

Webinars

The Whatfix website features a library of on-demand webinars around change management, digital transformation, digital adoption, employee experience, user onboarding, and many more topics. From time to time, the company also hosts live webinars.

Podcast - The Digital Adoption Show

The Digital Adoption Show is Whatfix’s podcast that features thought leaders from the HR and L&D departments of large enterprises who talk about inspiring stories of how they accelerate digital adoption and implement strategies for growth.

Customer stories

Whatfix showcases real-life outcomes in a series of case studies on its website to build customer confidence.

Newsletter

Whatfix publishes a monthly LinkedIn newsletter, which has nearly 60,000 subscribers currently. Creatively titled “Digital Adoption Insider,” the newsletter talks about driving and analyzing software adoption for employees, customers, and end users. 

Whatfix University

Users can get a certification in Whatfix by pursuing courses like:

• Whatfix Digital Adoption Associate: Covers basics and fundamental concepts in Whatfix
• Whatfix Digital Adoption Content Specialist: Covers appropriate writing guidelines and best practices to author content in Whatfix
• Whatfix Digital Adoption Solutions Specialist: Covers technical concepts in Whatfix 

Whatfix Digital Adoption Strategist: Covers the concepts of efficient project management

Virtual Roundtable

Whatfix brings together product experts and industry leaders at its Virtual Roundtables, enabling companies to scale their digital transformation experiences. 

Growth Strategies for 2025 and Beyond

Despite Whatfix getting roughly 79% of its business from the United States, 90% of the “heavy lifting” is done in India.

The company has added several new enterprise customers, such as Westland Insurance Group, Coca-Cola Beverages Africa, Aggreko, Microsoft, Datacom Group, and Allstate Insurance Group. 

Whatfix looks to continuously innovate, and its efforts are helped along by its recent acquisitions.

In 2021, Whatfix acquired Nittio Learn, an LMS, to enhance Whatfix’s application training capabilities by making learning richer and more personalized. 

In 2022, Whatfix acquired Leap.ai, a mobile-first onboarding and assistance platform formerly known as Jiny.io. The acquisition is meant to augment Leap’s platform by harnessing Whatfix’s mobile capabilities. Leap is intended to integrate with existing applications and provide guidance on mobile apps to boost adoption and activation, reduce time-to-ship for onboarding, and enhance the customization of the overall user experience. 

Conclusion

The push toward remote and/or hybrid work has enabled Whatfix to grow as enterprises need a solution to drive efficiency in the adoption of new tech tools. The company has already hit $75 million ARR, and it is looking to cross the $100 million ARR mark in 2025.

In addition, Whatfix is also working on developing AI-linked integrations and large language models for its platform.  

As Vara Kumar says, “We’re not stopping there. Whatfix is re-imagining the entire future of DAP, and what digital adoption as a concept means.”