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The Global Rewards and Recognition industry stands at around USD 300Bn. Of which, Xoxoday is targeting around 1% market share. Founded by Manoj Agarwal, Sumit Khandelwal, Abhishek Kumar, and Kushal Agarwal, Xoxoday enables real-time, digital global rewards which are linked to a client’s business KPIs. These rewards increase employee engagement, improve channel performance, enhance sales performance & more.
It is interesting to note that Xoxoday is currently growing at a rate of 100% YoY in terms of revenue. No wonder, its clientele includes some of the notable companies like Infosys, HCL, SAP SuccessFactors, Siemens and more.
StartupTalky interviewed the founding team of Xoxoday to know its Success Story. In this post, you will know all about Xoxoday Growth Story, Revenue Model, Funding, How it started & more.
Xoxoday – Company Highlights
| Startup Name | Xoxoday |
|---|---|
| Founders | Manoj Agarwal, Sumit Khandelwal, Abhishek Kumar, Kushal Agarwal |
| Founding Year | 2012 (Pivot in 2018) |
| Headquarters | Bangalore |
| Industry | Rewards and Recognition |
| Total Funding | $30.5 mn (February 2022) |
| Gross Revenue | USD 42Mn in FY20-21 |
| Operating Locations | India, US, UK, Ireland |
| Notable Clientele | Infosys, Nielsen, Mahindra Group, HCL, Siemens & more |
| Website | xoxoday.com |
Xoxoday – About
Xoxoday – Industry
Xoxoday – Founders and Team
Xoxoday – Startup Story
Xoxoday – Mission and Vision
Xoxoday – Products and USP
Xoxoday – Name, Meaning, Tagline and Logo
Xoxoday – Business Model and Revenue Model
Xoxoday – Startup Launch and User Acquisition
Xoxoday – Challenges Faced
Xoxoday – Funding and Investors
Xoxoday – Acquisitions
Xoxoday – Marketing Strategies
Xoxoday – Growth and Revenue
Xoxoday – Advisors and Mentors
Xoxoday – Competitors
Xoxoday – Recognition and Achievements
Xoxoday – Future Plans
Xoxoday – About
Xoxoday provides technology infrastructure to enable rewards & recognition for global clients. The company enables real-time, digital global rewards which are linked to a client’s business KPIs. These rewards increase employee engagement, improve channel performance, enhance sales performance and build brand loyalty/retention for their clients.
Key Use Cases:
- Employee Rewards & Recognition
- Sales & Channel Incentives
- Consumer Rewards. The products are enabled through In-app integrations (with CRM, ERP, HRMS, Survey Portals, Gaming Portals)
Vidhi Punamiya
Xoxoday – Industry
According to industry estimates, the company is targeting around 1% market share in around US$ 300Bn rewards and recognition industry globally. The R&R industry is divided into:
- Consumer acquisition, retention and loyalty (US$ 200 Bn) – Drive consumer demand in the sales funnel to improve ARPU, loyalty & new customer growth.
- Sales & Channel Incentives (US$ 40Bn) – Drive sales & channel teams targets, performance & throughput.
- Employee Rewards and Recognition (US$ 60 Bn) – Improve employee engagement, eNPS, productivity & retention.
This space is seeing a lot of traction in terms of funding, M&A, and consolidation and is ripe for exponential growth in the coming future. Xoxoday is poised to take advantage of this growth by solving the key customer pain points through technology, continuous innovation, and expanding its geographical footprint through organic and inorganic growth.
(Source: everestgrp.com, octanner.com, incentivemarketing.org)
Xoxoday – Founders and Team
Manoj Agarwal, Sumit Khandelwal, Abhishek Kumar, and Kushal Agarwal are the founders of Xoxoday.
“We met each other (4 founders), through common friends and family circles. We were passionate, young individuals with varied backgrounds who wanted to build a great organization” says the Xoxoday founding team.
The company has around 175 employees mostly located in Bangalore, Delhi, Mumbai, Dublin & USA. The team is young and very stable. There are a lot of employees who are entrepreneurs before joining Xoxoday. There are a good number of people from premier colleges like IIT & IIM. The company has a very good working culture and that reflects in the low attrition rate in the company.
Manoj Agarwal
With 15+ years of experience in technology, product and marketing with companies like Yahoo, Flipkart & Manipal education and health, Manoj takes care of the product, marketing, customer service, and process automation at Xoxoday. An MBA IIM Kozhikode and a Computer Science BTech from PEC Chandigarh, this co-founder’s Hobbies & Interests include yoga, fitness, reading, family time.
Sumit Khandelwal
Khandelwal possesses over 14 years of experience in sales and marketing in companies like Hexaware, Wipro Consumer, Metro Cash & Carry. He is an MBA from TAPMI and an engineer from NIT Nagpur whose hobbies and interests include bike riding, reading, and running. Sumit leads finance and international sales at Xoxoday.
Abhishek Kumar
Abhishek Kumar brings in 13+ years of experience in engineering and technology and has previously worked with companies like Manhattan Associates and Nettpositive. Kumar has a BTech degree from IIT Bombay and his hobbies and interests include painting, travelling, and technology. At Xoxoday, Abhishek leads engineering and technology. Abhishek Kumar co-founded Evening Flavors and Prodintel Technologies.
Kushal Agarwal
Kushal Agarwal leads India sales for Xoxoday. Agarwal has 8+ years of experience working with Bidco-Oil refineries, and has represented India in Mongol Rally and the Great Nile River Ride. Agarwal has a Btech degree in Electronics and has then opted for PGDM in Management from the Welingkar Institute of Management. Agarwal currently is the Co-founder of Xoxoday along with being co-founders of Empuls and Compass AI. His interests include travelling, car rallies, storytelling, etc.
Xoxoday is currently working with a 270+ member strong team.
Avantika Bhardwaj
Xoxoday – Startup Story
The founders, Manoj and Sumit come from business families. Manoj also comes from great entrepreneur mindset companies like Yahoo & Flipkart. Both these factors gave the team a lot of initial confidence in the startup.
We also found a big gap in the market and a good business opportunity in the rewards and motivation technology business – says the team
The founders validated the idea with their existing contacts in the corporate world. Once they were confident of providing value to their customers, Xoxoday started reaching out to other companies. It acquired around 30 new clients in the first few months which was a great validation of the product-market fit.
Xoxoday – Mission and Vision
Vision
Xoxoday brings simplicity and continuity to a complex, everyday problem of human motivation.
Mission
Xoxoday’s mission is to put human motivation at the center of business growth through technology
Xoxoday – Products and USP
Xoxoday, technology products solve the following use cases in the rewards and incentives space.
- Employee Rewards and Incentives
- Sales and Channel Incentives
- Consumer Rewards
To address the above, Xoxoday has come up with 3 products with differentiated offerings catering to each use case. These products are called: Plum, Empuls and Compass.
Plum – Transactional Reward Platform
Plum is an API-based, real-time pay-as-you-go transactional reward platform. Plum helps drive behaviours that power business results with engaging rewards including gift cards, experiences, discounts, merchandise, & more. The platform can be used to reward employees, consumers, and channel partners. Plum integrates with over 100+ platforms like HRIS (Darwinbox, Bamboo HR), CRMs (FreshDesk, Zoho), ERPs (SAP), Survey platforms (Survey Monkey, Typeform), collaboration tools (Zappier, Marketo), and more.
Empuls – Employee Engagement Platform
Empuls helps improve employee productivity, performance & retention with an easy to use engagement application. Empuls is a holistic employee engagement platform. The platform helps build and drive company culture and ethos in the organization. This helps drive employee engagement, motivation, and overall culture in the organization. A strong culture is extremely important during these times when 90% of the employees are not working from the office.
Compass – Sales & Channel Partner Gamification Software
Compass is a sales and channel partner gamification software to increase sales achievement. Compass integrates with the existing ERP platform of the client and lets the user create sales campaigns. These campaigns are monitored on a real-time basis providing real-time feedback to increase sales. The platform can gamify the sales target achievement based on product lines, geographies, special sales events as per the company sales strategy.
Key USPs of the solutions:
- Easy to set up, use and scalable tech platform (with open APIs, integrations with 100+ apps)
- Largest and most diversified reward catalog in the industry – over 120+ countries covered and over 20+ categories covered.
- Over 100+ app integrations like Survey Monkey, Freshdesk, SAP, Darwinbox, Zapier, Slack, Microsoft Teams, and more.
- Modern UI & UX
Idea Pivot:
Xoxoday started in 2012 but did a pivot in 2018. From 2012 to 2017, they were doing experiences and activities business in India. Similar to a Klook/Getyourguide or Viator.
“While doing this business we found that we are ahead of the market as both the supply and demand were premature in India. They still are premature. However, we were selling these experiences/activities to corporates as rewards and gifts. In 2018, we extended the rewards business into a full stack technology company covering different reward use cases for employees, channel partners, sales team, and consumers. Since 2018, we have been growing very well” the team adds.
Dev Kumar Padhy
Xoxoday – Name, Meaning, Tagline and Logo
XOXO – means Hugs and Kisses in chats. So basically, Xoxoday means love and happiness every day.
At Xoxoday, the team deeply understands the intrinsic and extrinsic motivation and engagement drivers of people, be it an employee, sales, channel partner, gig worker, or consumer. It brings simplicity and continuity to a complex, everyday problem of human motivation. It brings love and happiness in the lives of employees, sales and channel partners of its clients every day.
“Make every day rewarding,” says the tagline of Xoxoday.
The logo is bright orange showing energy and happiness and the connotation with “day”, just like the colour of sunrise.
Xoxoday – Business Model and Revenue Model
The revenue model is pay-as-you-go SaaS. It is similar to pricing models of payment companies like Stripe and communication companies like Twilio. Xoxoday’s Revenue model has 2 components: Commission on transactional reward revenue and Platform software fees.
Xoxoday – Startup Launch and User Acquisition
Initially, the team reached out to their contacts in the corporate world. “We requested them to give our services a try. Once we were confident of providing value to our customers, we started reaching out to other companies” says the team.
The initial set of customers was acquired through common connections, customer referrals, and organic marketing initiatives. These customers then helped Xoxoday with more referrals. Xoxoday’s product quality has been a big winner. It has built the product with quality UI/UX, modern outlook and built for the users with extensive primary research.
“We keep listening to our customers and improve the products every month” Xoxoday team added.
Xoxoday’s customer success team also has been doing very well by working with clients as partners and helping them succeed in their business metrics through its products. These two things have helped Xoxoday the best!
Few tools used by Xoxoday to run business –
MS Office, Google Sheets/Docs/PPTs, Freshdesk, HubSpot, Jira, AWS, Semrush, Google Adwords, Tally
Rishabh Rathi
Xoxoday – Challenges Faced
The Founding Team of Xoxoday says –
“Getting the right marketing mix has been a challenge. How can you build the right lead generation mechanism without shelling out a lot of marketing dollars. We experimented with various marketing tactics and hacks to overcome it.”
Xoxoday – Funding and Investors
Xoxoday raised total funding of USD 4,20,000 prior to pivoting in 2018. The startup recently was funded by Giift And Apis Partners LLP on February 23, 2022, when it was successful in raising $30 mn.
Xoxoday’s funding details are as follows:
| Date | Stage | Amount | Investors |
|---|---|---|---|
| February 23, 2022 | Private Equity Round | $30 mn | Giift And Apis Partners LLP |
| June 5, 2021 | Seed Round | – | – |
| August 2016 | Seed Round (For experience business) | $300K | Mahindra Holidays |
| July 2013 | Angel Round | $120K | Kshatriya Ventures |
Xoxoday is almost EBITDA zero and only spent for growth.
Xoxoday – Acquisitions
Xoxoday has acquired 4 companies to date. Here’s taking a look at its acquisitions:
| Companies Acquired | Date of Acquisition | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| FamousEnuf | January 7, 2019 | – |
| BookMyInterest | June 13, 2016 | – |
| Actizone | January 27, 2016 | – |
| Yipeedo | October 15, 2015 | – |
Xoxoday – Marketing Strategies
Xoxoday has done a lot of marketing hacks across its journey. Partnerships marketing has worked very well for the brand. The company has done various marketing campaigns with its integration partners which have been a win-win for both parties. High-quality content along with SEO has been another strategy that worked very well for Xoxoday.
Karan suri
Xoxoday – Growth and Revenue
- Xoxoday has subsidiaries in the USA, Dublin, and Singapore.
- Operating Locations: Spread across 10+ countries including India, US, UK, Ireland
- Offices: Has 4 global offices one in Singapore, Dublin and San Francisco each
- Revenue: Gross US$ 42Mn in FY20-21 and net is around 4.5 mn USD.
- Userbase: 2.5 mn+
- Total Clients: Worked with over 2000 clients
- Notable Clients: Infosys, Freshworx, Xexec, SAP Successfactors, Nielsen, Mahindra Group, HCL, Siemens
- Growth: Growing at around 100% YoY in terms of revenue
- Future Plans: To be a US$ 1.3 Bn global rewards and incentive platform company by 2025
Ayush Varshney
Xoxoday – Advisors and Mentors
Shreesha Ramdas has been the advisor/mentor of Xoxoday. He is an entrepreneurial executive with a track record of launching and growing products in competitive markets.
Xoxoday – Competitors
Tango card, Tillo, Blackhawk Network, Wegift, Workstride, Sendoso, Bonusly, Perkbox are some of the competitors of Xoxoday.
Ansh Mehrey
Xoxoday – Recognition and Achievements
- Forrester top incentives software report
- Everest PEAK matrix
- G2 crowd best rewards software in 2020 APAC region
- DigitalHR award
- Oracle top 50 startups in 2018
- Ranked #20th in Deloitte Technology Fast 50 Award 2020 in India
- Key Players in Gamification Industry
- Key Players Landscape in Channel Incentives space by Forrester
- Case study published by Harvard Business Review HBR
- Top 15 employee recognition platform 2021
Xoxoday – Future Plans
- International Expansion – Increase presence in US, Europe and SEA markets
- Product Innovation – See product roadmap below.
Xoxoday – FAQs
What is Xoxoday?
Xoxoday is a Bengaluru-based full-stack embedded solution company that helps businesses automate rewards, benefits, incentives and payouts and get the most out of them with modern, cutting-edge infrastructure and technology.
When is Xoxoday founded?
Xoxoday was founded on April 2, 2012.
What are the subsidiaries of Xoxoday?
The Xoxoday subsidiaries include Plum, empuls, and Compass.
What is the Xoxoday revenue?
The Bengaluru-based Saas startup was founded back in 2012 and has already crossed the 100 crore mark between the fiscal years 2018 and 2019.
