SaaS-based customer feedback & survey platform WebEngage eyeing $1M revenues in FY14, claims 12K customers

Mumbai-based Webklipper Technologies Pvt Ltd, which owns and operates WebEngage, a SaaS-based on-site customer engagement tool for online businesses, is looking to close the current financial year (FY2013-14) with $1 million in revenues, its co-founder and CEO Avlesh Singh told Techcircle.in.

Founded in October 2010 by Singh, along with Ankit Utreja (CTO), WebEngage's solutions allow online businesses to run promotions and offers on their websites and gather customer insights. Singh holds a B Tech degree in mineral engineering from Indian School of Mines, Dhanbad (Jharkhand). He earlier worked with Infomedia18, Burrp, OnYoMo and HCL. His partner Utreja is a computer science graduate and earlier worked at TCS and Burrp.

Currently, WebEngage offers three products: Notification tool which helps businesses drive sales and conversions on their websites by allowing them to push targeted offers, discounts and messages to users on the website; Surveys tool which  allows businesses to collect customer insights at specific points in their application's workflow; and its feedback management solution which enables enterprises to set up a feedback tab on their website in less than a minute.

The firm offers fremium subscription plans to clients. The basic plan starts at $29 a month and it can go up to $2,499 depending on the type of the plan. Singh claimed that the firm has been cash-flow profitable for the last five months and has been seeing 30-35 per cent monthly revenue growth in the same time frame. However, he declined to share exact revenue figures.

The firm counts among its key clients companies such as Flipkart, MakeMyTrip, Jabong, Myntra, Snapdeal, Avaya, Intuit and Udemy. "We have close to 12,000 customers (paid and non-paid) in 35 countries across sectors like e-commerce, content and media, etc. Around 65-70 per cent of our customers are from outside India and out of all the paid ones, 10 per cent are enterprise customers," said Singh.

With 10 people on board, the firm is also planning to launch two new products—live dashboard and live chat—this month since, according to the company, it is a natural extension of its existing products.

The company has already raised two rounds of funding (from Indian Angel Network and New York-based GTI Capital) and is now looking for a bigger funding round early next year. The startup is also planning to expand its operations to the US. "We will soon open an office in New York where most of the e-commerce companies in the US are located. We will aggressively look at customer acquisition in the market," Singh said.

WebEngage's competitors include KISSmetrics and Web Toolbar. With e-commerce being its key area of focus, WebEngage also wants to expand the solutions to other verticals. "We see a lot of potential in India, especially in the BFSI and education sectors." However, he admitted that in comparison to foreign markets, getting a customer on board is difficult in India.

(Edited by Joby Puthuparampil Johnson)