Indian Startup Launches Whatfix For Making Web-based How-To Guides

After enjoying success with its first software product SearchEnabler, India’s Bangalore-based tech startup QuickoLabs has launched its second product in the form of Whatfix.

A Whatfix how-to guide in action.

Whatfix is a tool that lets anyone create and share how-to guides on any site. This could be useful for fellow startups or any business that needs to guide workers or customers through a series of steps on a website. The how-to can be viewed as an embeddable slideshow, or – by installing a browser extension – the guide can be “run” so that text markers literally point out what steps you need to take. Check out the demo video below.

According to Khadim Batti, QuickoLabs’ co-founder, the bootstrapped startup initiated Whatfix’s development in January this year, came out with the private beta in May, and this week it’s in public beta for anyone to try. So far, Whatfix has some 650 users, and about 300 of those have contributed to its development – that includes individual users, tutors, and some businesses.

After initially only supporting Google’s Chrome browser for running those interactive guides, Whatfix now also supports Firefox via an add-on. Of course, the slideshows are different, and require only Adobe’s Flash in any browser.

How to monetize how-tos?

The idea for Whatfix was born from the pains experienced with QuickoLabs’ first product, SearchEnabler, which is an on-demand SEO platform for startups, small businesses, and marketers. That required guiding people around the site, and the idea was born for a way to enable companies to create good how-to guides for the web.

Batti, who founded QuickoLabs’ in 2010 along with Vara Kumar, explains the product’s road-map:

First, we want to make Whatfix popular among users, build a community around it and create a momentum for ‘how-to’ guides. This will help to establish how-tos among users in the next four to six months; and once it’s accepted, we will build the enterprise version and make it commercial. After, we will look for investors and VCs.

(Editing by Steven Millward)