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The Indian SaaS ecosystem lost a true visionary this week. Khadim Batti didn’t just build a great company; he fundamentally changed how we think about the user experience. 🕊️ When Khadim Batti co-founded Whatfix, he did it by observing a massive, unaddressed friction point in the corporate world: Businesses were spending millions on complex software, but the actual employees were struggling to use it. His solution was a concept he championed called "Userization"—the profound idea that technology must adapt to the user, rather than forcing the user to undergo endless, frustrating training to understand the technology. As a UI/UX designer, this is the ultimate north star. We spend so much time talking about features, onboarding, and capability. But Khadim understood that if the software causes cognitive overload, it has failed its primary mission. Whatfix became a near-unicorn ($900M valuation) because it acted as the bridge of empathy between complex code and everyday human behavior. Beyond being a relentless builder, he is remembered as a generous mentor, an active angel investor, and a pillar of the SaaSBoomi community who always made time to lift other founders up. A lifelong learner who proved that the best products—and the best leaders—are built on a foundation of empathy. Rest in peace, Khadim Batti. #KhadimBatti #Whatfix #SaaS #IndianStartups #ProductDesign #UIUX #UserExperience #SaaSBoomi #TechLeadership #FounderJourney

🚀 The Global SaaS market is hitting $375B — but India is playing a completely different game. According to market research from Gartner, NASSCOM, and Grand View Research, global Software-as-a-Service growth is holding steady, while India’s SaaS ecosystem is surging ahead at a 16.9% – 22.8% CAGR. Here is how the landscape breaks down: 🌐 The Global Picture • Market Size: $312B – $375B+ • Cloud Share: SaaS remains the largest cloud segment, accounting for ~36% of all global cloud spending. • Core Shift: Enterprise spend is pivoting rapidly from fixed seat tiers toward AI-native tools and usage-based pricing models. 🇮🇳 The Indian Engine • Market Scale: Indian SaaS startups are on track to generate $25 Billion in revenue. • High Velocity: Growing at 17–23% CAGR, significantly outpacing global averages. • The AI Wave: Over 40% of emerging Indian SaaS tools incorporate generative AI, low-code, or agentic automation natively. 💡 Why the Indian ecosystem is winning: 1️⃣ Capital Efficiency & Low CAC: Favorable burn rates combined with sharp Product-Led Growth (PLG) keep unit economics resilient. 2️⃣ Category Leadership: Moving away from simple low-cost tools, companies are setting the global standard for product design. 3️⃣ Developer Strength: With massive developer adoption in AI and LLM orchestration, India is becoming the default engine room for vertical SaaS. We are watching the shift happen in real-time: from built in India for the world to designed in India to define the category. What trends are you seeing in B2B SaaS and AI tools this quarter? Let’s connect in the comments! 👇 #SaaS #IndianSaaS #B2BSaaS #SaaSIndia #Zoho #Freshworks #Postman #Icertis #Chargebee #BrowserStack #Druva #LeadSquared #Zenoti #Keka #Kissflow #SaaSBOOMi #StartupIndia #CloudComputing #GenAI #AISaaS #ProductLedGrowth

I can't write a single line of code, and I just demoed our AI product to a room full of founders. Got an opportunity to present our product at AIBoomi :) I have never ‘shipped or dropped’ one before. Does that disqualify me from building in AI? In today’s world, absolutely not. My job was to be relentlessly clear on the problem and to have the taste of how our product would solve it. That, and of course, finding someone who could turn that vision into a solid reality. None of this happens without my technical co-founder, who takes the judgment my cofounder & I bring and builds it into a solution. I got to put that to the test recently at AIBoomi's Chennai Bootcamp, held at FC Madras in Chengalpattu. The feedback we got from the crowd was tremendously encouraging and all applause! A few founders whose companies I deeply respect told me they saw real potential in what we are building. Hearing that from people who've built and scaled their businesses means something. Huge thanks to the AIBoomi team for putting this together. Grateful to have had the platform. And more on the product soon!

This jam just keeps getting better! 🙌 Presenting the second batch of speakers joining AIBoomi Caravan ’26, bringing together founders and operators who’ve built, scaled, sold, repositioned, distributed, and lived through more than a few chapters of the company-building journey. Different journeys. Different vantage points. One shared willingness to come together and make the conversations count. 🔸 Ajeet Singh | ThoughtSpot 🔸 Arjun Pillai | Docket 🔸 Arvind Parthiban | SuperOps 🔸 Girish Redekar | Sprinto 🔸 Jessica Gilmartin | Fractional CMO & Advisor 🔸 Srikrishnan Ganesan | Rocketlane 💜 https://lnkd.in/gd_AhZ8K More to come. #Caravan26 #Software #Startups #AI

AIBoomi Fellowship helped me tackle the hardest part of transitioning from working to building. Applications close this Sunday. Apply if this resonates 👇🏽 I remember first encountering the concept of autonomy at work and getting super excited that I was literally expected to 'just run with it' 😯 Of course, most other parts of my role were always structured. Clear expectations and targets to meet. Basically, do not step on someone's toes! When I quit my job at Postman in 2023, I attended my first AIBoomi Annual event. I knew I wanted to start up, but nothing about the how. A few days later, I met Avinash for coffee. By the end of the 60 minutes, the Fellowship program was born. Except for a couple of basic things like getting a stipend and solving p0 problems, we didn't know what this would turn into. It quickly became the wildest gig I ever had. > Built the agenda for the biggest event with founders of Chargebee, Wingman, Kayako, Invideo, Rocketlane, and many others > Built quarterly review decks for the General Counsel > Built and led the first 2-day AI Bootcamp > Pitched AIBoomi Caravan to Gokul Rajaraman [he's a big deal, to me] > Curated AI Show & Tell with one of the partners at Lightspeed Honestly, a lot, lot more. This was the most autonomy I had in a role. I started most things with a blank page and built a team around to execute the vision. Exactly the kind of lessons I needed. Without this, it would have been a tough shift to build Pageloop right after quitting. But the biggest thing I gained was the confidence of the kindest, smartest builders in the ecosystem. They became mentors, critics, angels, and 2 am friends. It literally would not be possible without this. AIBoomi fellowship was my biggest hack to starting up. If you're sitting with the thought of starting but unsure where to begin, this is for you. https://lnkd.in/dxTq6fad

Kicking off 𝗧𝗲𝗰𝗵𝗟𝗼𝗿𝗲 by AIBoomi tonight. 🚀 First session: voice agents, with Vivekanand Pani, Coremantle. Tech leader shipping voice agents? Sign up, we start this evening. 🤝

He never made you feel like your problem was too small for his time. Khadim Batti built Whatfix into a $260M+ SaaS company serving Fortune 1000 clients across the globe. But talk to anyone in India's startup circle this week, and the funding numbers aren't what comes up first. What comes up is that he made time. For early-stage founders who hadn't raised a rupee. For long WhatsApp threads at odd hours. For showing up — genuinely showing up — at SaaSBoomi and AIBoomi (https://lnkd.in/dxrf2hD9), not as a marquee name, but as a peer who wanted to help. He co-founded Whatfix in Bengaluru in 2014, solving a problem most people considered too boring to build a company around: employees drowning in software they didn't understand. A decade later, it was one of India's most credible global SaaS exports. Sudden cardiac arrest took him at 50 — while he was still building, still mentoring, still excited about the next AI product he'd shipped. For India's founder community, this isn't just a loss of a CEO. It's the loss of someone who quietly held a lot of the ecosystem together. Rest well, Khadim. Thank you for making time. Full tribute: https://lnkd.in/dDBCvpwm #KhadimBatti #Whatfix #IndiaSaaS #StartupIndia #SaaSBoomi #FounderCommunity #TechLeadership #Bengaluru #Entrepreneurship

I want a smaller engineering team in the age of AI. I suspect most of you do too. But I recently realised I was chasing that goal the wrong way, and it was the biggest self-reflection I took away from the AIBoomi bootcamp in FC Madras Chennai last week. Amazing campus btw. Here's what hit me: if I shrink my team without rebuilding my process first, I don't get leverage. I get a bottleneck. I end up shipping less than I could have, not because AI isn't capable, but because of artificial constraints I left in place around it. I was setting a goal and then quietly sabotaging it. A smaller team on top of an old process isn't lean. It's just under-resourced. I also realised being AI-native in engineering isn't "give everyone an AI coding assistant." It's redesigning the whole path from ticket to production so AI takes the first pass at every step, and my engineers supervise instead of doing the grunt work. So here's the list I'm now working through, things I think any engineering org can start attacking today: 1. AI coding assistants as the default, every engineer, every day, not an occasional experiment. 2. Tests generated and maintained by AI, not written from scratch. 3. An automated AI review pass before any human review, so people only look at what's already been vetted. 4. PR descriptions, changelogs and docs generated automatically. No more hand-writing them. 5. Tickets that flow into the pipeline on their own, work selected and a first-pass PR drafted before an engineer even opens it. 6. Fully automated deploys. No human in the release path. 7. Infrastructure that scales itself, with no one babysitting capacity. 8. Alerts enriched and triaged before anyone gets paged. 9. AI-assisted root-cause during incidents, instead of engineers reading logs at 2am. 10. Systems that can roll back and heal themselves. I'm not doing all ten at once. I'm picking the one costing my team the most hours right now, fixing it, then moving to the next. Special thanks to Anand Chandrasekaran and Ashwini Asokan from Mad Street Den for compiling this, a sharp, practical checklist. My takeaway: I have to earn a smaller team through better process. Not the other way around. Pic: The FC Madras campus in Chennai, where we gathered for this chat. Beautiful campus, btw.

A campaign going live is only the beginning. The real magic happens when Marketing and Sales know which accounts to prioritise, who to engage and what should happen next. At Scrut Automation we are hiring a Senior Manager – Integrated Marketing (ABM) to bring account strategy, buying committees, campaigns and Sales follow-ups together. It’s for someone who can see the bigger picture, bring different teams together and turn good strategy into action. You’ll enjoy this role if you: - Have built or run ABM campaigns - Know that one lead doesn’t equal an engaged account - Enjoy working closely with Sales - Care more about SQLs and pipeline than impressive-looking dashboards 📍 Remote, India 🕒 Daily overlap with U.S. hours 🎯 3–7 years of B2B marketing experience If this sounds like a challenge you would enjoy owning, we’d love to hear from you. Know someone who would be great at this? Please send this their way Apply here: https://lnkd.in/gVGhm3tT Sharing this with the RevGenius and AIBoomi communities. #Hiring #AccountBasedMarketing #B2BMarketing #DemandGeneration #SaaSJobs Amrita Agnihotri Ishani Sircar Shreya Banga Sai Charan M Ritika Upadhyay Kalpana Gaur

This one's a frame that will always be his. 🧡 We’re still struggling to make sense of the fact that Khadim is no longer with us. He was deeply woven into the AIBoomi community as a mentor, a generous contributor, a familiar presence in our rooms, and in 2025-26, a member of our Governing Council. Over the years, many of us had the privilege of learning from him, exchanging ideas with him, and watching him show up for founders with warmth, generosity, and a genuine willingness to help. What he built with Whatfix inspired an entire generation of founders. But for us, the memories go well beyond what he built. We will remember the person, the humility with which he carried himself, the time he made for people, the knowledge he shared freely, and the quiet, consistent way in which he gave back to the ecosystem he helped shape. His passing feels deeply personal to all of us at AIBoomi. Khadim leaves behind an extraordinary legacy in India’s SaaS and AI ecosystem. And in our own little AIBoomi Hall of Fame, he will always occupy one of its most legendary frames. We will remember him with immense gratitude and affection. Rest in peace, Khadim. You will always remain a part of this community. 🙏

𝗞𝗵𝗮𝗱𝗶𝗺 𝗕𝗮𝘁𝘁𝗶, cofounder and CEO of enterprise software company Whatfix, has died at 49 following a sudden cardiac arrest, the company confirmed. Batti co-founded Whatfix with Vara Kumar Namburu in Bengaluru in 2014 and helped build it into a global enterprise software company serving 700+ organisations, including 80+ Fortune 500 companies. In September 2024, Whatfix raised $125 million in a Series E round led by Warburg Pincus at a valuation of around $900 million. His passing has drawn tributes from founders and technology leaders across India’s startup ecosystem. Read the full story on: https://lnkd.in/dWRq8R-V #KhadimBatti #Whatfix #SaaS #IndianStartups #Entrepreneurship #TechIndustry #AI #SaaSBoomi #StartupIndia #CEOVINE

I heard about Khadim's passing yesterday. I didn't know him personally. But for anyone building SaaS in India, this one feels personal. I met him twice during SaaSBoomi. The first time was my first SaaSBoomi event. We were pitching to a prospect over lunch. Khadim was sitting at the next table. After my prospect left, he turned to us and started chatting. Funny thing, I knew Whatfix, I knew the founder's name, but I had no idea what he looked like. He introduced himself to me anyway, warmly, without any of the distance you would expect from someone at his stature. The second time I met him, I assumed he wouldn't remember me. He did. I never got to work with him, and I can only imagine how much heavier this loss must be for the people who knew him closely. But even from the edges, he was known for his ambition, warmth and humility. He built one of the biggest success stories the Indian SaaS ecosystem has ever seen. He will be remembered for the company, and just as much for the way he carried himself. My condolences to his family, the Whatfix team, and everyone who knew him.

Khadim Batti built Whatfix for 12 years. He didn't get to see what it became. Khadim Batti, co-founder and CEO of Whatfix, died suddenly on September 1 following a cardiac arrest. He was close to 49, according to several reports. It was especially difficult for India's SaaS ecosystem as Batti wasn't just running a company. He had become one of the people helping build the ecosystem around it. Batti's entrepreneurial journey began before Whatfix. After spending nearly a decade at Huawei, he and Vara Kumar started SearchEnabler around 2010. The product struggled because customers couldn't figure out how to implement its recommendations. That failure became the insight behind Whatfix: instead of telling people what software could do, show them how to use it inside the software itself. They built Whatfix in Bengaluru in 2014. Twelve years later, the company had become a global enterprise SaaS business with 700+ customers, including Shell, Microsoft, Cisco and Schneider Electric, and more than 10 million users. Its 2024 funding round of $125 million, led by Warburg Pincus LLC with participation from SoftBank Group Corp.'s Vision Fund 2, valued the company at roughly $900 million. By late 2025, Whatfix had 900+ employees. Whatfix wasn't an overnight success story. It came from a failed product, a pivot, and years of persistence in a category that didn't even have an obvious name when they started. Batti helped turn "software is difficult to use" into an enterprise software category of its own. And outside Whatfix, he spent years giving time to other founders. He was involved with SaaSBoomi, was among the founding members of AIBoomi, mentored entrepreneurs and invested as an angel across companies in enterprise software, AI, healthcare and EV infrastructure. His co-founder Vara Kumar said Batti had spoken with him at length on Monday night, just a day before his death, and that they had discussed their respective health situations. Kumar said Batti had been maintaining his health well. His family will hold his last rites in his hometown in Gujarat. There is something deeply uncomfortable about stories like this for founders. We spend years talking about the next round, the next product, the next market, the next milestone and the next IPO. Batti was reportedly helping prepare Whatfix for an IPO expected around late 2026 or early 2027. He won't be there to see it. So, if there is one lesson founders should take from this, it isn't some romanticised "work-life balance" cliché. Build the company so well that it can continue without you. Take care of yourself while building it. Build leaders who can carry the vision. Document what only you know. Invest early in people who can make decisions without you. #whatfix #IPO #news #linkedin #startup #startipindia #saasboomi

Lost a friend yesterday.. Khadim Batti, co-founder and CEO of Whatfix. I still haven't come to terms with it. Yesterday has been a blur, with an upheaval of emotions I haven’t been able to process. I've known Khadim since February 2020.. our first conversation was on February 24th that year. I'd just left InMobi, and Factors wasn't even a real company yet. He was one of our first angel investors. But he was never just a name on the cap table. He was a mentor and a friend. I never had to ask him for help.. it was more like, he already knew what we were dealing with, hiring, growth, whatever the problem of the month was, and he'd just show up with an answer. Last year, while we were raising, he didn't stop at making introductions. He was following up across time zones, checking in on how things were going with investors. And whenever there was a hard conversation to navigate.. with an investor, a partner, anyone, he made time to talk it through. He'd share his honest take, and sometimes he'd even go and advocate on the other side, just to keep things running smoothly. Most of our best conversations happened over coffee at the Whatfix office. I would be there for some other meeting, or giving a demo of our product to someone, and I'd just ping him.. "let's grab a coffee." He always made time. He was also part of AIBoomi with us, and gave back so much there too.. inspiration for a lot of founders and volunteers, myself included. A friend, a mentor, almost like a brother.. a guardian angel through this entire journey. We are indebted to him in ways I don't fully know how to put into words right now. Condolences to his family and everyone at Whatfix. Rest well, Khadim.

Khadim Batti. Co-founder and CEO of Whatfix. Passed away yesterday from a sudden cardiac arrest. He was 49. I have been following Khadim since 2021 and was lucky to meet him. This is a profound loss for the Indian SaaS ecosystem and for everyone who believes that world-class technology companies can be built from India. Khadim came from a small town in Gujarat. He studied Electrical Engineering, worked at Huawei, and could have built a long, comfortable corporate career. Instead, he chose to create. He co-founded Whatfix in 2013 with Vara Kumar. Over the next decade, he built it into a global digital adoption platform valued at $900 million, serving enterprises around the world. Quietly. Consistently. Without shortcuts. He did not chase headlines. He did not optimise for visibility. He just built. Year after year. Through the phases when nobody was watching and the outcome was far from guaranteed. Beyond Whatfix, Khadim helped shape the ecosystem itself. He served on SaaSBOOMi's governing council and was a founding member of AIBoomi. He did not just build his own company. He invested his time in ensuring others could build theirs. What our generation should take from his life: That the quiet builders outlast the loud ones. That a founder from a small town in India can compete on the global stage without moving to Silicon Valley. That conviction, patience, and a decade of showing up will always matter more than noise. Khadim Batti leaves behind a company, a community, and a legacy that will continue to inspire founders for generations. Gujarat lost a son who made it proud. The SaaS world lost a builder who showed us what was possible. Rest in peace, Sir.

I’ll always remember Khadim as “The Dog Story guy.” I first met him at SaaSBOOMi in 2019. We had just started Peoplebox.ai, raised our first funding, and were complete newbies figuring out how to build a global SaaS company from India. Khadim was telling me about the very different hustle of building global SaaS from India. He told me a story I never forgot. In Whatfix’s early days, they would take late-night sales calls from the office with US prospects. The street dogs outside would often bark loud enough to be heard during demos. So while one founder was on the call, sometimes the other would go outside and shoo the dogs away so the demo could continue seamlessly. To me, that story captured Khadim, the hustle, perseverance, humility and willingness to do whatever it took to build Whatfix with Vara. Every time we met, we would somehow end up laughing about the dog story. To me, Khadim was never just another founder in the ecosystem. He was a friend, a guide, and a mentor to so many founders around him. Despite all the success, he remained incredibly generous with his time, experiences and learnings. Yesterday, we didn’t just lose an incredible entrepreneur. We lost a core part of the Indian SaaS ecosystem. I'm really devastated and still finding it very hard to believe. 😢 My prayers are with his family, Vara, and everyone at Whatfix. Rest in peace, Khadim. ❤️ You will be deeply missed 🙏 Khadim Batti Vara Kumar Namburu Romita M. Nivedita B. Vispi Daver

Deeply shocked and saddened that Khadim Batti is no more! Beyond being a visionary founder and an investor with us, he was always generous with his time, advice and wisdom for fellow founders. Very rare in the startup world. I last met him at the 2025 SaaSBoomi event. He was his usual confident, cheerful self. Strong yet humble. Sharp, but always a great listener. A genuine founder’s founder. We will miss him. So will the larger founder community he gave so much to. May his family find the strength to cope with this immense loss 🙏

Khadim Batti, co-founder and CEO of SaaS company Whatfix, has passed away. Batti was a respected figure in India’s SaaS and AI ecosystem and played a key role in building Whatfix into a globally recognised enterprise software company. He co-founded Whatfix with Vara Kumar Namburu in 2014. The company’s digital adoption platform helps enterprises improve how employees use software and navigate digital tools. Beyond Whatfix, Batti was deeply involved in India’s startup community. He served on SaaSBoomi’s governing council and was also a founding member of AIBoomi, a community focused on India’s AI-first product ecosystem. His entrepreneurial journey began in 2010 when he co-founded SearchEnabler, before going on to build Whatfix. With more than two decades of experience across software development and business leadership, Batti leaves behind a significant contribution to India’s SaaS ecosystem. His impact extended beyond the company he built — he helped strengthen the community around India’s next generation of software and AI founders. #Bengaluru #Entrepreneurs #Founders #Whatfix #SaaS #AI #Entrepreneurship #IndianStartups #Entrepolish

Yesterday, I heard the heartbreaking news of the passing of Khadim, Whatfix ’s CEO. It hit differently because I had the privilege of experiencing his leadership firsthand. I joined Whatfix as an SDR, yet he never made me feel like I was “just an SDR.” He would sit right beside us, make himself approachable, and genuinely care about his people. He built a culture where ambition and excellence coexisted with humility, empathy, and care. Even years later, when I met him at SaasBoomi, he spoke to me with the same warmth and attention he had when I was at Whatfix. I still remember that I got through my Whatfix interview after he watched my interview with Prakhar; that was all it took. It said so much about his ability to trust his people and make decisions quickly. Years later, those are still some of the strongest lessons I carry from Whatfix and from him. I’m sure up there you are God’s choicest person! My deepest condolences to his family, friends, and everyone who had the privilege of knowing him. His legacy will live through the people and culture he built.

OUR SIH 2026 SPEAKER FOR TODAY. What does it take to go from SIH Finalist → SIH Winner? Today, you get to hear it directly from someone who's done it. 🎙️ Our Speaker for Today: Dhiraj Dahale 🏆 Smart India Hackathon 2025 Winner 🎯 SIH 2024 Finalist 🥈 AIBoomi Startup Hackathon Runner-Up His SIH journey wasn't a straight line - and that's exactly what makes his experience worth hearing. Come learn about the difference between having an idea and building a solution that can actually compete. 📅 TODAY - 2 September 2026 ⏰ 10:00 AM onwards 📍 Seminar Hall, SVIT If SIH 2026 is on your list, don't miss this. Organized by Innovation & Incubation Cell × SVIT Student Council #SIH2026 #SmartIndiaHackathon #SIHWorkshop #SVIT #Hackathon #Innovation #AIML #StudentBuilders #SVITStudentClubNetwork #BuildForIndia