Whatfix is building its own Gen AI vision model, says CEO Khadim Batti

Whatfix co-founder and CEO Khadim Batti.

Softbank-backed Whatfix, a business-to-business digital adoption platform, is building its own generative artificial intelligence (Gen AI) vision model for its customers which will be disruptive, cofounder and chief executive officer Khadim Batti has told Moneycontrol.

“We are working on something interesting with generative AI. We have been working on this for six to seven quarters from now, it is like reimagining Whatfix in the AI world and we believe it can be very disruptive…We are building our own vision model,” Batti said on October 16.

Generative AI learns from data to create new content such as a text, an image and computer codes based on that training. Gen AI is the new tech frontier that is changing the way we learn, work and create content.

Whatfix’s model comes from research and collected data on how an enterprise’s software works and is trained to help employees or customers identify which software or which function can help achieve a specified task.

“Today we are doing this process through demos and walk-throughs, we want AI to do this task. We already got to 60-70 percent accuracy and we have more to build and once we get there, we will be able to roll this out,” Batti said.

The statement comes at a time when large software as a service (SaaS) players in the ecosystem are working on building their own large language models (LLMs). LLMs are algorithms that use huge sets of data to create new content.

Indian SaaS major Zoho is building its own LLM similar to OpenAI's GPT and Google's PaLM 2 models.

Whatfix is also developing a range of AI-powered features to complement its current DAP product lineup.

These advancements are specifically designed to streamline the end-user journey within an organization's application stack, resulting in an elevated user experience and better  ROI for the organisation.

Whatfix’s funding plans

In July 2021, the SaaS firm raised $90 million in a funding round led by SoftBank’s Vision Fund 2.

Reports suggested that Whatfix was looking to raise funds from Warburg but Batti said that the firm had not signed term sheets and had enough runway.

“We have not taken any term sheets and we are doing fine as we are. We are still waiting and watching and we have enough funds for now. We still have around 10 quarters of runway and we hardly burned any cash. Our cost is coming down and the runway is still there and there is no pressure to raise funds,” he said.

Growth roadmap

In FY22, Whatfix reported a net loss of Rs 706 crore, up from Rs 187 crore in FY21. Its revenue, however, was up 60 percent at Rs 172 crore.

Batti is confident of maintaining revenue growth despite macroeconomic pressures bringing down demand for SaaS firms.

“In 2024 we may grow at around 50 percent revenue growth rate and we will bring out newer products to the market. We started working on a new simulation product called Mirror, however, it is still in talks and research and we will work on that and roll it out by the end of next year,” Batti said.