Fintech GoalTeller raises $500,000 Pre-Series A from slew of investors

Automated financial planning platform GoalTeller has announced the closure of a Pre-Series A funding round of $500,000 from existing investors and a slew of other participants.

A press release issued by the company said the round received funding from Ranjan Pai (Chairman, MEMG), Pankaj Fitkariwala and Himanshu Bhagat (senior professionals from the wealth management space), Vikas Poddar (co-founder, Ashirvad Pipes and Principal at Vikas Poddar Family Office), Prashasta Seth (angel investor and founder, Prudent Inv Managers) and Harsh Chhaparia (partner, McKinsey & Co).

The company has marquee early backers such as Rainmatter (a Zerodha group firm), Kunal Shah (founder, Cred), Raghunandan G (ex-founder, Taxiforsure and founder, Zolve), Vivek Hinduja (ex-promoter, Gokaldas Exports) and Sousthav Chakravarthy (founder, Siply).

This is the company's second fundraise, and follows an earlier mop-up of Rs 1.25 crore 

With the current capital raised, the company plans to focus on further building its team, especially on the sales development and some senior tech hires. From a current strength of 17, it aims to move to around 25 by end of this year. 

"The biggest problem for the Indian capital markets is shallow participation. To bring the next million investors into the market, they need good advice and smart financial planning tools. Helping startups that build for the next million investors is what excites us at Rainmatter, and we are excited to join GoalTeller on this journey," said Nithin Kamath, CEO, Zerodha and Rainmatter.

Pai of MEMG, one of the principal participants in the fundraise, made note of GoalTeller's initiatives in democratising financial advice and said he believed in the team, which had accomplished such a task before.

GoalTeller has been testing out its product in a closed user group and had a soft release on February 5. The company operates under RIA and MFD licenses that allows it to offer both advisory and distribution services, albeit with strict firewalls ensuring no overlaps of clients and advise. GoalTeller aims to differentiate itself by advising on the entire canvas of products including small saving schemes / insurance policies alongwith the usual MF’s and equities. 

The company is among the earliest adopters of the Account Aggregator ecosystem, and is already leveraging data to provide insights on the money users are losing on idle bank account balances. 

Founded in 2020, GoalTeller aims to bring high quality financial planning advice across investments, goals and succession planning to every individual in the country with the help of technology and its exhaustive proprietary algorithms. 

The company has had selective releases over the past few months with the learnings in each of these releases being incorporated into future offerings. It plans to go fully live in March or April.