Posted by Whatfix, a digital adoption platform solutions (DAPS) provider, is riding high on last year’s success. As it has geared up to tap the rapidly growing digital adoption solutions market globally with plans to strengthen its overseas presence and increase headcount to 500 plus in 2021.
Digital Adoption and The COVID-19 Crisis
The unprecedented pandemic led challenges marred the year 2020, which crippled businesses and human lives world over. But the year also witnessed the extensive usage and adoption of digital tools.
Enterprises and organisations have been heavily relying on these digital tools to support their remote workforce and run their business operations amid the Covid-19 crisis.
Whatfix Gains Momentum in 2020
This on-going trend helped propel Whatfix’s business significantly in 2020. For instance, Whatfix’s in-app engagement increased by 150% last year. This simply means more customers around the globe used its digital adoption platform solutions (DAPS) and are likely to continue using it ahead.
“Whatfix has around 500 enterprise customers. Among them 70% are from the US, 20% are from Western Europe (Germany, France, Netherlands and the UK),” Khadim Batti, CEO and Co-Founder – Whatfix Inc told TechHerald in a recent video interaction.
“And the rest 10 to 12% customers are spread across the globe — in Australia, Africa and India,” added Batti.
Strengthening Overseas Presence
With the US and European contribute around 90% of Whatfix’s overall business, the company has plans to strengthen its existing physical presence in those locations along with new ones like Japan.
“We have plans to double the company’s existing physical presence in those locations along with UK and Australia,” said Batti.
“By early 2021, we are looking to set up presence in Germany and Japan as well,” he added. This move would help the company strengthen its overall global presence and reach.
Khadim Batti and Vara Kumar (CTO) founded the Bangalore-based Whatfix in 2014. The company hired over 260 staff globally in 2020, taking its total headcount to 430.
Among these 430 staff, around 270-280 are based in Bangalore, while 34-35 are in the US. “We have two major ports with main offices in the Bay Area – San Jose and Atlanta; and have a small office presence in London and Melbourne as well,” informed Batti.
Increasing Application Footprint
Besides, the company wants new customers and seeks to expand the application footprint among its existing customers. Typically, customers use Whatfix platform for one, three or five applications at the most.
But Batti wants to expand the platform usage to 50 or 100 applications in an enterprise. This would give Whatfix a deeper – wider penetration into the enterprises and importantly increase revenue per customer.
“If Whatfix gets deployed in some 50 to 80 applications across the organisation than it can help with improved adoption. And that gives a multi-million-dollar footprint in any enterprise,” Batti opined.
However, for that, it needs more capabilities and some changes to its platform. “For that, we are increasing our products’ team capabilities to cater to the organisation. We are coming up with different form factors and capabilities – so we can target enterprise-wide,” Batti said.
Building Teams And Capabilities
To make it possible, Whatfix has been building a local, geographical accounts team. The team would work with CXOs, CIOs and help them in consulting and advising on how digital adoption can be set up in their organisations.
“We recently launched the Centre of Excellence (CoE) format, helping them set up CoE in digital adoption across the organisation and see RoI at the CXO level. So, this another piece we started working on and want to accelerate,” Batti added.
The demand for digital adoption platforms and tools will continue to grow more this year. This means digital adoption platform solutions (DAPS) companies like Whatfix will have bigger market opportunities and demands to serve.
Certainly, the Covid-19 scenario has played its part in driving the demands of DAPS last year and is unlikely to change much this year too. Also, the digital adoption platform (DAP) remains as one of the core aspects of digital and business transformation.
And the way, Whatfix has geared-up its strategy and plans. It’s a clear reflection of the market scenario that businesses and enterprises are in today.
Digital Adoption Market Opportunities
But to tap the market opportunities globally, Whatfix would need more sales and tech support staff. “We will add 100 to 120 employees, which would strengthen the company’s overall workforce cross 500 to 550,” Batti stated.
The digital adoption platform is a relatively new software segment with lesser market awareness, but for enterprises, it offers a wide scope for applications, usage and benefits to drive productivity and improve RoI.
Gartner recognised Digital Adoption Solutions (DAS) technology category in May 2019. By 2025, Gartner estimates that 70% of organisations will use digital adoption solutions across the entire technology stack to overcome still insufficient application user experiences.
By 2027, the global Digital Adoption Platform Software (DAPS) market, according to Absolute Markets Insights, will grow at a CAGR of 15.5% due to the growing prominence of digital transformation. With this growth rate, it expects the market size of $162.84 million by 2027.
(Watch this entire interaction with Whatfix CEO Kadim Batti on TechHerald channel)