Ex-Elevation Capital Partner Alok Goel’s Financial Planning Startup Raises $15 Mn

SUMMARY

The round saw participation from Elevation Capital, Jungle Ventures, Venture Highway, and as many as 25 other angel investors

The fintech SaaS startup helps companies in building financial plans and budgeting

Drivetrain plans to use the funding to scale up product development and to expand its workforce

Former Elevation Capital executive Alok Goel’s financial planning and decision-making startup, Drivetrain, has raised $15 Mn in a funding round led by Elevation Capital, Jungle Ventures, and Venture Highway.

More than 25 angel investors, advisors, founders, and individual investors also participated in this funding round.

Founded in April 2021 by Goel, Tarkeshwar Thakur and Saurav Bhagat, Drivetrain helps organisations build financial plans and budgets.

“Today, finance teams spend up to four weeks every quarter tracking key business metrics and generating reports for their stakeholders. Meanwhile, Drivetrain enables these companies to consolidate their data and get insights in near real-time. This helps them focus more on forward-looking questions during board meetings,” said Deepak Gaur, partner at Elevation Capital.

The startup facilitates companies in keeping a check on their performance and identifying bottlenecks in their processes. Drivetrain’s offerings include automated financial reporting, monthly forecasting, revenue planning, sales performance measurements, headcount planning, among others.

The fintech SaaS startup integrates with financial ERPs, CRMs, marketing software and HRIS and uses the consolidated data to build financial plans, enable forecasting and other allied business analysis.

“Gauging your business health in real-time and applying course corrections is impossible on spreadsheets. Instead, with Drivetrain, you can make better, confident decisions in days, not months–a key strategic advantage,” said, Alok Goel, cofounder and CEO of Drivetrain.

Drivetrain follows a subscription model and largely caters to finance teams working at business-to-business (B2B) tech companies, CXOs and industry leaders. Its B2B clientele includes Whatfix, FarEye and Mindtickle, among others. It directly competes with startups such as FinBox and BlueCopa that operate in the same space.

Drivetrain will use the funds for product development and for expanding its workforce.

Prior to founding Drivetrain, Alok worked as a partner with Elevation Capital for more than 6 years while Bhagat co-led the SaaS investments at Elevation Capital. On the other hand, Tarkeshwar led the engineering division of Freshworks.

According to an Inc42 report, India’s fintech market is estimated to become $1.3 Tn by 2025. The industry is expected to grow at a CAGR of 40% during 2021-25. The report further stated fintech SaaS, which is a sub-sector of fintech industry, is set to become $12.6 Bn by the forecasted period.