As startups navigate an increasingly complex funding landscape and the rapid rise of artificial intelligence, the role of finance leaders has evolved far beyond traditional accounting and reporting. At Verloop.io, a leading AI-powered customer engagement platform, CFO Ankit Sarawagi stands at the intersection of finance, strategy, and innovation. With experience spanning healthtech, e-commerce, SaaS, and now Agentic AI, Sarawagi has built a career around helping businesses scale sustainably while maintaining financial discipline.
In this exclusive conversation with Indian Startup Times, he shares insights on the changing role of CFOs, building investor trust, balancing growth with profitability, and navigating financial planning in the AI era.
Building Businesses Through Strategic Finance
For Ankit Sarawagi, startup finance has always been about more than managing numbers. Early in his career, he recognized that finance plays a critical role in shaping business decisions while companies are still evolving. Rather than remaining confined to reporting and compliance, finance influences product investments, pricing strategies, expansion plans, hiring decisions, and capital allocation.
His journey across healthtech, e-commerce, SaaS, and AI has reinforced a common lesson: sustainable growth depends on deploying capital effectively while maintaining strong financial fundamentals. Although industries differ significantly, the core questions remain the same—where to invest, how to create long-term value, and how to scale efficiently without compromising business fundamentals.
The Modern CFO: From Financial Steward to Strategic Leader
Sarawagi believes the CFO role has moved much closer to the center of business decision-making. While governance, compliance, and reporting remain essential responsibilities, today’s finance leaders are expected to interpret data and help shape future outcomes.
As businesses become increasingly dynamic, CFOs actively participate in discussions around growth strategies, pricing models, customer acquisition, product development, and investment priorities. Instead of merely measuring business performance after decisions are made, finance leaders now contribute directly to shaping those decisions from the outset.
Trust and Transparency Define Investor Relationships
In today’s startup ecosystem, Sarawagi emphasizes that trust between founders and investors is built on transparency rather than perfection. Investors understand that startups will face challenges, miss targets, and adapt strategies as markets evolve.
What matters most is consistent communication and visibility. Founders who openly discuss challenges, communicate risks early, and maintain transparency during difficult periods tend to develop stronger long-term investor relationships. Over time, predictability and honest communication become just as valuable as performance metrics because they demonstrate a company’s ability to navigate uncertainty.
Growth and Profitability Are Not Opposing Goals
The startup funding environment has undergone a significant shift in recent years, prompting businesses to focus more closely on capital efficiency and profitability. According to Sarawagi, growth and financial discipline should not be viewed as competing priorities.
He argues that growth creates value only when supported by strong underlying economics. Otherwise, businesses risk scaling inefficiencies rather than building sustainable enterprises. Investors today scrutinize how growth is funded, how quickly capital is recovered, and whether businesses can sustain momentum without relying heavily on external capital.
Successful startups continue investing in growth but make those investments with a clear understanding of unit economics, payback periods, and capital efficiency. The most resilient companies identify the metrics that matter most and act on them with discipline.
Financial Planning in the Age of AI
The emergence of AI has introduced new complexities into financial planning. Unlike traditional software businesses, AI companies operate in environments where infrastructure costs, model usage patterns, customer adoption rates, and product capabilities can change rapidly.
At Verloop.io, Sarawagi focuses on building financial agility rather than relying solely on static annual forecasts. He believes scenario planning is more valuable than attempting to predict every outcome with precision.
This approach allows the company to maintain visibility into capital deployment, customer value creation, and the effectiveness of investments. While technology continues to evolve at unprecedented speed, the principles of sound capital allocation remain unchanged.
Common Fundraising Mistakes Startups Must Avoid
Sarawagi observes that fundraising often shifts founders’ attention toward valuations, investor interest, and round sizes, sometimes at the expense of fundamental business understanding.
One of the most common mistakes startups make during fundraising is failing to clearly articulate their numbers, capital requirements, and path to value creation. Investors evaluate more than business performance—they assess the quality of judgment demonstrated by founders.
Strong fundraising conversations emerge when founders possess a deep understanding of growth drivers, risks, unit economics, and capital allocation strategies. Investors are often more impressed by clarity and understanding than by overly polished narratives.
The Metrics That Matter Most
When evaluating a startup’s long-term potential, Sarawagi believes that the most important metrics are those that indicate whether customers continue to derive value from the product.
While revenue growth remains important, it rarely tells the complete story. In AI and customer engagement businesses like Verloop.io, he pays close attention to customer retention, expansion within existing accounts, unit economics, and the efficiency of growth generation.
Retention, in particular, serves as a powerful indicator of product-market fit because it reflects whether a solution addresses meaningful customer problems. Sustainable businesses combine customer value, operational discipline, and efficient growth, allowing each factor to reinforce the others.
Looking Ahead
As artificial intelligence continues to transform industries, finance leaders will play an increasingly strategic role in guiding organizations through uncertainty and rapid innovation. For Ankit Sarawagi, the future of finance lies in enabling smarter decisions, allocating capital effectively, and ensuring that growth remains sustainable.
His perspective highlights an important reality for modern startups: success is not determined solely by innovation or funding. It emerges from the ability to combine vision, financial discipline, transparency, and customer value into a scalable and enduring business model.
Interview By : Arushi Agarwal
