SaaS agency Whatfix co-founder and CEO, a outstanding determine in India’s startup ecosystem, has handed away. He suffered a cardiac arrest, in line with media reviews. He was about 50 years previous.

Batti led Whatfix for greater than a decade, constructing it with cofounder Vara Kumar from a small Bengaluru startup into one of many largest software-as-a-service corporations to return out of India, with greater than 1,100 workers and clients throughout the Fortune 500.

Avinash Raghava, CEO of the SaaS founder collective SaaSBOOMi, remembered him in a submit on X as a pal and a mentor who supported founders throughout the Indian ecosystem.

“His journey with Whatfix impressed so many founders on this group,” Raghava wrote.

“However past every part he constructed, I’ll bear in mind Khadim for the particular person he was. A beautiful pal. A beneficiant mentor. Somebody who all the time made time for the ecosystem and confirmed up for founders with heat and sincerity. We’ve misplaced somebody very particular as we speak. My coronary heart goes out to his household, your entire Whatfix staff, and everybody who was near him. Relaxation in peace, Khadim. You’ll be deeply missed,” he added.

I’m deeply shocked and saddened by the passing of Khadim Batti, Co-founder of Whatfix, earlier as we speak.

I am really struggling to seek out the best phrases whereas processing this information.

Khadim has been such an necessary a part of our AIBoomi group and of the bigger SaaS and AI ecosystem… pic.twitter.com/wwNrBl6jF9

— Avinash Raghava 🇮🇳 (@avinashraghava) September 1, 2026

The corporate he constructed twice

Batti and Vara Kumar had been engineers at Huawei Applied sciences’ India analysis centre earlier than they left to start out their very own firm. In 2010, they based SearchEnabler, a search engine optimisation device geared toward small companies. It didn’t work out the way in which they hoped.

What they seen as a substitute was a special downside: clients struggled to make use of the software program that they had already purchased. Round 2014 the 2 of them turned the corporate in direction of that downside and renamed it Whatfix.

Notably, he held a Grasp’s diploma in Data Know-how from IIIT Bangalore and a Bachelor’s diploma in Electrical Engineering from the College of Mumbai.

What Whatfix really does?

Whatfix builds what the business calls a digital adoption platform. It sits as a layer on high of different software program, an HR system, a CRM, an inside device, and guides the particular person utilizing it with prompts, walkthroughs and assist that seems in the mean time they get caught.

Massive corporations purchase monumental quantities of software program after which uncover their workers don’t use most of it, or use it wrongly. Whatfix’s pitch was that the repair was no more coaching classes, however steerage constructed into the software program itself.

Batti referred to as this concept “userization”, putting the burden of being simple to make use of on the expertise relatively than on the particular person.

The pivot labored. Whatfix grew for ten consecutive years underneath Batti, launching 4 new merchandise after 2021 and securing 5 US patents with extra filed.

What Whatfix grew to become

In September 2024, Whatfix raised $125 million in a Collection E spherical led by Warburg Pincus, which put in $100 million, with SoftBank’s Imaginative and prescient Fund 2 including $25 million. The spherical valued the corporate at near $900 million, a 50% enhance on the roughly $600 million valuation at its 2021 Collection D, which SoftBank had additionally led.

To date, the corporate has raised round $266 million, from buyers together with Warburg Pincus, SoftBank, Dragoneer, Peak XV Companions, Eight Roads, Cisco Investments and Helion Enterprise Companions. It’s headquartered in San Jose, California, with its foremost operations in Bengaluru, Karnataka.

Whatfix has not but issued a public assertion on succession.