Whatfix co-founder Khadim Batti, a prominent figure in India’s startup ecosystem, passes away

SaaS firm Whatfix co-founder and CEO, a prominent figure in India's startup ecosystem, has passed away. He suffered a cardiac arrest, according to media reports. He was about 50 years old. Batti led Whatfix for more than a decade, building it with cofounder Vara Kumar from a small Bengaluru startup into one of the largest software-as-a-service companies to come out of India, with more than 1,100 employees and customers across the Fortune 500. Avinash Raghava, CEO of the SaaS founder collective SaaSBOOMi, remembered him in a post on X as a friend and a mentor who supported founders across the Indian ecosystem. "His journey with Whatfix inspired so many founders in this community," Raghava wrote. "But beyond everything he built, I will remember Khadim for the person he was. A wonderful friend. A generous mentor. Someone who always made time for the ecosystem and showed up for founders with warmth and sincerity. We have lost someone very special today. My heart goes out to his family, the entire Whatfix team, and everyone who was close to him. Rest in peace, Khadim. You will be deeply missed," he added. I’m deeply shocked and saddened by the passing of Khadim Batti, Co-founder of Whatfix, earlier today. I'm truly struggling to find the right words while processing this news. Khadim has been such an important part of our AIBoomi community and of the larger SaaS and AI ecosystem... pic.twitter.com/wwNrBl6jF9 — Avinash Raghava 🇮🇳 (@avinashraghava) September 1, 2026 The company he built twice Batti and Vara Kumar were engineers at Huawei Technologies' India research centre before they left to start their own company. In 2010, they founded SearchEnabler, a search engine optimisation tool aimed at small businesses. It did not work out the way they hoped. What they noticed instead was a different problem: customers struggled to use the software they had already bought. Around 2014 the two of them turned the company towards that problem and renamed it Whatfix. Notably, he held a Master's degree in Information Technology from IIIT Bangalore and a Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Mumbai. What Whatfix actually does? Whatfix builds what the industry calls a digital adoption platform. It sits as a layer on top of other software, an HR system, a CRM, an internal tool, and guides the person using it with prompts, walkthroughs and help that appears at the moment they get stuck. Large companies buy enormous amounts of software and then discover their employees do not use most of it, or use it wrongly. Whatfix's pitch was that the fix was not more training sessions, but guidance built into the software itself. Batti called this idea "userization", placing the burden of being easy to use on the technology rather than on the person. The pivot worked. Whatfix grew for ten consecutive years under Batti, launching four new products after 2021 and securing five US patents with more filed. What Whatfix became In September 2024, Whatfix raised $125 million in a Series E round led by Warburg Pincus, which put in $100 million, with SoftBank's Vision Fund 2 adding $25 million. The round valued the company at close to $900 million, a 50% increase on the roughly $600 million valuation at its 2021 Series D, which SoftBank had also led. So far, the company has raised around $266 million, from investors including Warburg Pincus, SoftBank, Dragoneer, Peak XV Partners, Eight Roads, Cisco Investments and Helion Venture Partners. It is headquartered in San Jose, California, with its main operations in Bengaluru, Karnataka. Whatfix has not yet issued a public statement on succession.