CXOToday has engaged in an exclusive interview with Prakhar Jain, VP, Global Sales, Whatfix
- How has India’s SaaS landscape evolved, and what is on the horizon for 2024?
The Indian SaaS (software-as-a-service) ecosystem could generate between $50 bn and $70 bn in revenue and $500 bn in enterprise value by 2030. This growth positions India as the second-largest SaaS ecosystem globally. The projections indicate ARR could reach $35 bn by 2027, capturing 8% of the global SaaS market. Clearly, SaaS is not just giving hope but is actively propelling India’s tech industry forward.
The next phase of growth and innovation for Indian SaaS will be propelled by DevOps, Cybersecurity, Vertical SaaS, and Generation AI. As the leading contributor to worldwide AI-related GitHub repositories and hosting 10% of the global developer community, India is positioned to significantly impact the global DevOps market. Additionally, with 16% of the global AI workforce and a pioneering role in AI product development, India stands at the forefront of advancements in AI.
As we approach 2024, Indian SaaS firms will be prioritizing revenue growth while ensuring operational and capital efficiency. Observing the revenue patterns, it’s evident that top-tier Indian SaaS businesses are mirroring the trajectories of US stalwarts stage by stage. A McKinsey and SaaSboomi report mentioned that Indian SaaS players could leverage emerging disruptions—such as omni-channel integration, conversational AI, and simplified workflows—to create differentiated business models and compete on a global scale.
- What role does a digital adoption platform play in digital transformation?
In the digital transformation (DX) journey, when you invest in new technology for your company or as part of your product, you want your customers and employees to use the technology to its fullest extent. However, the adoption rate, efficiency, and return on investment (ROI) are difficult to measure or gauge. Given the multitude of applications across various business functions, enterprises must focus on optimizing and seamlessly integrating DAP to fully realize the benefits of digital transformation and maximize ROI on the tech stack without causing technology fatigue for their users.
DAPs show users each feature of technology and how to use it, guiding them to learn and adopt it efficiently in real-time without the requirement of any training. This helps ensure that your company gets maximum value (and therefore maximum ROI) from the application, increasing the productivity of users and the company.
DAPs can overlay on any application and empower organizations and users to unlock the true potential of their enterprise and customer-facing applications across web, desktop, and mobile interfaces. It leverages advanced AI capabilities to provide users with contextual information and guidance to accelerate their path-to-productivity, enabling them to achieve individual and organizational business outcomes.
For instance, Sophos, a leading global cybersecurity company, faced the challenge of keeping up with frequent updates and customizations of the Salesforce CRM platform they recently implemented. To address this, they adopted our digital adoption platform, resulting in a remarkable turnaround. With 116,000+ Whatfix Smart Tips (which provide contextual information on elements that need additional details while using an application to end users) shown in 12 months and 400 Smart Tips engaged daily, their sales team became more confident and proficient with Salesforce, optimizing sales processes and boosting win rates. They also reduced about 12,000 support operations tickets with in app support.
- Shed some light on the DAP adoption by enterprises globally vs APAC. What role is Whatfix playing in it?
The Digital Adoption Platform (DAP) category stands at the brink of transformation, with pioneers like Whatfix and other players dedicating nearly a decade to building awareness. Globally, enterprises are increasingly acknowledging the significance of DAP in augmenting user adoption of new technologies. Though adoption rates differ across regions, including the dynamic Asia-Pacific (APAC), the overarching trend has been positive. Per Gartner, 70% of organizations will use digital adoption platforms within their technology stack to overcome still-insufficient application user experiences by 2025. Evidently, enterprises have been increasingly adopting DAPs to streamline digital transformation initiatives, improve operational efficiency, and ensure a smooth transition to digital platforms.
It is also getting industry recognition and appreciation that endorse customers’ sentiments. Earlier in the year, Whatfix was the only DAP vendor to be named a leader in the inaugural Workplace Employee Experience Management (WEEM) Platforms PEAK Matrix® by the Everest Group. In another report by the research firm on identifying the right EX solution for enterprise priorities, DAP was the only technology that emerged as critical. Whatfix is the only DAP provider, leading two of the Everest Group PEAK Matrix® Reports – Workplace Employee Experience Management and DAP. It was also named Leader in the first ever Forrester New Wave™: Digital Adoption Platforms. In fact, Whatfix is also listed as highest- ranking DAP on Deloitte Technology Fast 500™ North America for the third consecutive year.
- How has your journey at Whatfix been as the first employee to becoming an ‘accidental sales leader’?
My journey into the world of sales occurred by chance while I was pursuing my entrepreneurial aspirations with my nascent startup idea. As luck would have it, Whatfix happened!
I became the first employee at Whatfix. Initially, I had set my sights on a marketing role, but our CEO, Khadim Batti, identified my skill set and persuaded me to join sales. Nine years later, I can confidently affirm that this decision was pivotal.
My tenure at Whatfix has been a rewarding pursuit of experimentation and the transformation of successful experiments into scalable processes. I started by setting up the sales process, and with repeatable success, I could segment it into sales recruitment, sales operations, and sales enablement functions, along with the strategic implementation of a robust sales tech stack, streamlining processes, and fostering automation.
Currently, I spearhead our North America and EMEA Sales, guiding a global team. We have driven consistent year-on-year growth, empowering customers worldwide through Whatfix’s Digital Adoption Platform. Additionally, the team has successfully onboarded over 135 Fortune 1000 companies and, in total, over 700 clients across 30 countries. This achievement stands as a testament to Whatfix’s unique remote inside sales model, selling large ticket sizes from India globally, which is a rarity in the Indian SaaS landscape.
- AI has revolutionized digital transformation in 2023; how is Whatfix keeping up with the trend?
Whatfix has been utilizing AI/ML across our product for a few years now. So we’re no strangers to AI, really. Specifically for Generative AI, we’ve built a number of AI-powered capabilities over the past few months that supplement our existing DAP product offerings. All of these are geared towards making the technology user savvy, leading to an enhanced experience for end-users and improved ROI realization for an organization through increased user productivity and process compliance.
Whatfix sits atop 1000+ customer-facing and employee-facing applications across web, desktop, and mobile platforms, significantly reducing the time and effort involved in user interactions with software applications. This extensive experience uniquely positions Whatfix to revolutionize the DAP category with the power of AI.
We follow a strict “human-in-the-middle” philosophy that ensures AI complements and empowers human expertise rather than attempting to circumvent or replace it. End-users retain the autonomy to review AI-generated outputs before utilizing them, while business and IT stakeholders maintain a finer level of control over the AI implementation.
We’re also taking steps to ensure AI hallucination is mitigated. This includes tuning models for each customer, ensuring that they are highly contextual to their specific digital processes and tasks, as well as incorporating and learning from contextual feedback and input from individual customers. Whatfix’s DAP helps businesses accelerate software adoption and drive digital transformation, and with AI integration, we are making DAP even more powerful and effective.
- How can a novel userization approach address customer challenges in the age of digital transformation, and how can organizations benefit from this concept?
Whatfix pioneered the concept of Userization in 2022. Userization makes it easier for users to complete tasks and achieve their outcomes seamlessly in software applications.
Userization serves as the bridge that ensures technology adapts to the user, not the other way around. It empowers organizations to deliver user-friendly technology solutions that enhance user experiences and drive greater efficiency and productivity across the application stack. It also encourages users to unlock their full potential, making technology more accessible, intuitive, and approachable.
For instance, in the auto-insurance industry, coverage and services were standardized and designed based on groups of users. This meant the average driving habits of all drivers were used to predict the habits of each driver. Today, auto insurers use a technology called ‘telematics’ which monitors various driving habits and details related to miles covered, speed, safety, etc. This technology helps insurance companies modify individual customer policies and decide rates based on individuals rather than regional or national averages.
At Whatfix, we have championed the Userization philosophy; our DAP, Product Analytics and AI capabilities are built on this concept. We are committed to developing solutions that will push userization to its full potential.
