Khadim Batti, co-founder and CEO of Bengaluru-founded, San Francisco-headquartered SaaS company Whatfix, has passed away after suffering a cardiac arrest. He was around 50 years old.
Batti co-founded Whatfix in 2013 alongside Vara Kumar Namburu, building it from an early-stage Indian startup into one of the country’s best-known SaaS “soonicorns.” He led the company as CEO through more than a decade of growth, during which Whatfix became a widely recognised name in the enterprise software space, both in India and globally.
News of his passing spread quickly through India’s startup and SaaS community on Monday, with founders, operators, and industry peers sharing tributes online. Avinash Raghava, CEO of the SaaS collective SaaSBOOMi, remembered Batti as a friend and mentor who had supported founders and contributed meaningfully to the Indian startup ecosystem. “His journey with Whatfix inspired so many founders in this community,” Raghava said in a post on X.
Whatfix offers an AI-powered digital adoption platform (DAP) that helps enterprises drive software adoption, onboard employees more efficiently, and get better returns on their technology investments. The platform is used by more than 700 enterprises worldwide, spanning industries from insurance to IT services, and counts several Fortune 500 companies among its customers.
Under Batti’s leadership, Whatfix grew from a Bengaluru-based startup into a global SaaS player with a significant presence in the US market, raising funding from marquee investors along the way and establishing itself as one of the more prominent digital adoption platforms internationally. He was widely regarded within the Indian tech ecosystem not just as a successful founder, but as someone actively invested in mentoring other entrepreneurs and giving back to the broader startup community.
Before starting Whatfix, Batti held roles at companies including Huawei Technologies, Kenexa, and AppLabs Technologies. He held an engineering degree from the University of Mumbai.
Batti’s passing marks a significant loss for India’s SaaS and startup community, which has increasingly looked to founders like him as proof points of Indian-origin companies building and scaling successfully on the global stage. Whatfix is yet to issue an official statement on succession or the road ahead, and further details are awaited.
This is a developing story and will be updated as more information becomes available.