Xoxoday - The Success Story of the Rewards & Recognition Infrastructure Platform

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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.

Xoxoday - Company Highlights

  • Startup Name-Xoxoday
  • Founders-anoj Agarwal, Sumit Khandelwal, Abhishek Kumar, Kushal Agarwal
  • Founding -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 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)

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.

Xoxoday - Founders and Team

Manoj Agarwal, Sumit Khandelwal, Abhishek Kumar, and Kushal Agarwal are the founders of Xoxoday.

Founders of Xoxoday

Xoxoday Founders - Manoj Agarwal, Sumit Khandelwal, Abhishek Kumar, Kushal Agarwal

"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.

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.

Xoxoday Plum logo

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.

Xoxoday - empuls logo

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.

Xoxoday - Compass

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.

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 o 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!

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.

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.

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

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.

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
  • Xoxoday 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.