- PlanDelta, the Bulgarian startup for agile financial planning raises €2.3M in a round led by the international early-stage VC RTP Global, which has backed companies in the ranks of SumUp and Delivery Hero.
- The round is joined by 17 angel investors from across Bulgaria, the UK, Germany, and the US, many of which are current investors in the Bulgarian unicorn fintech company Payhawk. Among the investors is Konstantin Dzhengozov, CFO and co-founder at Payhawk.
- PlanDelta will use the investment to fund the commercial launch of its first module at the beginning of 2023 and to expand its team in the UK, Netherlands, and Bulgaria.
The investment comes exactly one year after PlanDelta’s first €350K pre-seed round in November 2022, which was led by the Sofia-based VC Eleven Ventures. In 2022, the Bulgarian startup saw strong customer validation and active interest from investors.
“It wasn’t our initial idea to fundraise immediately after closing our pre-seed round. However, we got contacted by many international VCs that were well-familiar with the opportunities in our market. We validated our product-market fit with an MVP and even though we didn’t have any revenue, we were able to gain the trust of investors due to the strong market validation we received,” Martin Milanov, co-founder and CEO of PlanDelta, comments on the startup’s most recent traction.
With the mission to allow SMEs to do budgeting in an agile and collaborative manner as the project management tools do, PlanDelta is now focusing on launching its solution for agile financial planning based on business needs, strategies, and initiatives. The startup develops the first financial planning and analysis (FP&A) platform decreasing the time to value (a metric that measures the amount of time it takes your new customers to get value from your product or service) to just 1 day.
“PlanDelta is a game-changing experience for companies with dynamic financial planning needs, offering very quick and low-effort onboarding to start using the solution,” Konstantin Dzhengozov, CFO and co-founder at Payhawk, shares.
Bridging the gap between strategic planning and flexible financial budgeting
As Milanov explains, Finance Managers wish to work with Excel because it gives them all the freedom, but spreadsheets are not efficient when organizations become larger and the budgeting gets more complex. On the other hand, agile financial planning software tackles the problem with scalability but does not leave any room for financial maneuvering.
“With such strong support from top investors like RTP Global, and the mentorship of our 17 Angels, we believe we have a fighting chance to leave a dent in a multi-billion dollar and expanding market of financial planning and analyses. In the near future, we believe there will be an ultimate product that will combine the accessibility and flexibility of Excel with the agility and the modern look of business and project planning tools. The end result will be a modern and accessible platform for expanded planning which will break the silos between strategic and financial plans. We know how to get there and this current round boosts our confidence,” Milanov highlights.
According to Alex Pavlov, partner at RTP Global, there is demand in the market for flexible financing tools as most organizations with an FP&A platform still end up using spreadsheets. He believes that PlanDelta offers an alternative since it helps fast-growing companies streamline their financial planning and make their business and financial plans work together.
Time to value in less than a day
Unlike other FP&A solutions, which take weeks to implement, PlanDelta claims it gives finance managers access to actionable insights in 24 hours. “We are able to decrease the time to value to less than a day which is an essential part of ensuring quality customer experience. In addition, opposite to our competitors who are positioning themselves as substitutes of Excel, we allow financial managers to keep using Excel as this is a tool which is deeply rooted in every organization,” PlanDelta’s CEO explains.
The road to success of PlanDelta’s agile financial planning tool
The startup will start its commercial operations at the beginning of 2023, with the launch of its first module called Management Accounting. This module will allow finance teams to consolidate their financial and payroll data from a random accounting or Enterprise resource planning (ERP) system globally, map it into a format for management reporting purposes, and activate it.
The second module of PlanDelta, called Financial Planning, is expected to be released for commercial use in the middle of 2023. It will enable finance teams to start building plans and budgets that are consistent with the management structure they have already created within PlanDelta.
“The road to success sees us becoming one of the fastest growing scaleups in Central and Eastern Europe in the next 2 years, and we are already hiring across multiple functions in our team to make it happen,” Milanov says.
In the last 12 months, PlanDelta hired 12 people in Sofia, UK, and the Netherlands, and has plans to grow to more than 30 employees by the end of 2023 as it prepares for a strong market entry. The company will launch in the UK, the Netherlands, DACH, and Nordic regions.
