SoftBank Vision Fund II has led a US$90-million funding round in Whatfix , a digital adoption solutions platform, a senior company executive told ET in an exclusive interaction.
The new funding round values the Bengaluru- and US-headquartered software-as-a-service provider at around US$600 million, up from US$150 million when it raised funding a year ago, co-founder and chief executive officer at Whatfix, Khadim Batti told ET.
“Around US$90 million of the total funding is primary capital, while a small portion is towards secondary deals,” Batti said. Including the latest funding round, the company has so far raised US$140 million towards primary capital, he added.
“Our business has grown 2x in the last one year due to digital adoption being a fast-growing category. We expect to replicate the same growth in the current year as well,” Batti said. “The funding will be used to help the company with product innovation, step up its data analysis and machine learning capabilities and grow its enterprise offerings.”
He, however, refused to share revenue numbers of the company.
ET was the first to report on the SoftBank-Whatfix deal on April 20. This is SoftBank’s second bet on the enterprise technology space after MindTickle, a cross-border sales enablement platform it invested in November 2020.
The Whatfix funding comes amid SoftBank’s heightened investment activity in the Indian startup ecosystem. The Masayoshi Son-led fund is in talks to invest in a bevy of Indian companies, including Flipkart and OfBusiness. It recently invested in companies such as Delhivery, Swiggy and Meesho as part of their larger funding rounds.
Founded by Vara Kumar and Khadim Batti, Whatfix provides in-app guidance and performance support for web applications and software products to businesses. It helps enterprises deliver easy onboarding, training and self-service support. The company said last year its products have helped its clients increase employee productivity by 35 per cent, reduce training time and costs by 60 per cent, and increase application data accuracy by 20 per cent.
In February last year, Whatfix raised US$32 million in a Series C funding round led by Sequoia Capital India. Its other investors include Eight Roads Ventures, Cisco Investments and F-Prime Capital.
According to Gartner’s latest report on the enterprise SaaS space, “By 2025, 70 per cent of organisations will use digital adoption solutions across the entire technology stack to overcome still insufficient application user experiences”.
Additionally, “Employees are faced with increasing numbers of applications to learn and use to perform their jobs, creating technology adoption issues and decreased engagement. Application leaders must provide guidance and deploy digital adoption solutions as part of their digital transformation strategy”.
India’s SaaS unicorn club includes Freshworks, Druva, Innovaccer, Zenoti, Icertis and Postman.
