Audible investor leads $18.5m round in Israeli financial planning startup

DataRails, a financial planning and analysis platform based in Israel, has raised US$18.5 million in its series A funding round led by by early-stage venture capital firm Zeev Ventures.

Managed by venture capitalist Oren Zeev, the Silicon Valley-based firm has invested in startups such as Houzz, Audible. TripActions, and Chegg, among others.

The DataRails team / Photo credit: DataRails

Existing DataRails backers including Vertex Ventures Israel, Innovation Endeavors, and other private investors also participated, bringing the total funds raised by the company to US$28.5 million.

DataRails offers a cloud solution that collects data from existing Excel files that are scattered throughout the organization and from organizational cloud platforms. It adds the sheets to a database that’s updated in real time, enabling finance teams to use the data dashboard to create real-time graphs and presentations.

“Unlike sales and marketing departments, the processes in finance departments have been pretty much stagnant in the past 30 years and are still being conducted manually with Excel,” said Didi Gurfinkel, founder and CEO of DataRails. “That’s why we developed a technology that runs the Excel-based organizational processes in a transparent manner and completely automates the monthly and quarterly financial processes.”

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DataRails plans to use the fresh funding to accelerate its growth. The company says its annual recurring revenue increased by 5x in 2020.

Eyal Cohen, DataRails’ chief operating officer, is also one of the founders of digital adoption platform WalkMe, an Israeli unicorn that raised over US$300 million in funding.