Do you get there before the money runs out?
Default alive or default dead, worked out from your own numbers. Revenue grows, costs grow with it, and the calculator says which arrives first: break-even, or an empty bank account.
Where you are today
Across all accounts, less dues you already owe.
What you earned, excluding GST.
What each rupee of revenue leaves after every cost that varies with it.
Salaries, rent, software and everything else that does not move with sales.
Where you are heading
Use your own last six months, not the plan. Compounds.
Hiring, rent, tools. Set it to zero only if you genuinely intend to hold the cost base still.
The verdict
Default alive
Break-even around Mar 2028, with cash still in the bank.
On these assumptions the business reaches break-even in month 18, with cash still in the bank. That is default alive, and it means a raise becomes a choice rather than a deadline.
- Contribution last month
- ₹22,40,000
- Net burn last month
- ₹19,60,000
- Months to break-even
- 18
- Months of cash
- Beyond the horizon
- Lowest cash balance
- ₹51,46,153
- Lowest point
- Month 17
A straight-line projection from what you entered, over five years at most. It assumes growth and cost increases compound smoothly, which no real month does. Nothing you type is sent anywhere or stored.
Runway answers the easier question
Every founder knows their runway. Cash divided by burn, a number of months, usually recalculated whenever something unsettling happens.
It assumes nothing changes: revenue frozen where it is, costs frozen where they are. That's useful for a sanity check and almost useless for a decision, because in a growing company neither side stands still.
Default alive asks the better question. If revenue keeps growing at the rate it has been, and costs keep growing at the rate they have been, does the business start covering its own costs before the money runs out? If yes, you are default alive, and the next round becomes a choice. If no, you are default dead, and a raise is not a strategy but a deadline.
It is not a comfortable question, which is why most companies do not ask it until an investor does.
What the calculator does
- Takes your cash, last month's revenue, your contribution margin and your fixed costs.
- Grows revenue by your monthly growth rate and fixed costs by yours, both compounding.
- Walks forward month by month for up to five years.
- Reports the month contribution first covers fixed costs, and the month cash would run out.
- Compares the two and gives the verdict, with the lowest point the cash balance reaches on the way.
It works on contribution rather than revenue, so a business growing by selling at a thin margin does not appear to arrive sooner than it would. And it asks for cost growth separately, because the assumption that quietly ruins most of these projections is a cost base that holds still while revenue triples.
Reading the answer honestly
The verdict is only as good as the growth rate you type. Two rules make it useful rather than flattering.
Use the growth you have actually achieved over the last six months, not the growth in the plan. If the last six months averaged 4% and the plan says 10%, run it at 4% first and then at 10% to see how much of the answer depends on a change that has not happened yet.
And be honest about cost growth. A company that intends to keep hiring should not enter zero. In the default example on this page, cost growth of 2% a month is what turns a comfortable-looking position into a close one.
A worked example
The figures the calculator opens with, which are invented. A company has ₹2.6 crore in the bank, billed ₹32 lakh last month at a 70% contribution margin, and carries ₹42 lakh of fixed costs. Revenue has grown about 6% a month, and fixed costs about 2%.
| Figure | |
|---|---|
| Contribution last month | ₹22.4 lakh |
| Net burn last month | ₹19.6 lakh |
| Runway on that burn alone | About 13 months |
| Month contribution covers fixed costs | Month 18 |
| Lowest cash balance on the way | About ₹51 lakh, in month 17 |
| Verdict | Default alive, but only just |
Read the two middle rows together and the picture changes. A simple runway calculation says thirteen months, which sounds like a problem. Letting revenue grow says the business gets there in eighteen, with about ₹51 lakh left at the worst point.
That is a genuinely different company from the one the runway number described. It is also a fragile one: a couple of points off the growth rate, or a hiring round that lifts cost growth from 2% to 4%, and the answer flips. Which is exactly why it is worth running both.
What to do if the answer is default dead
Most early-stage companies are default dead, and there is nothing shameful in it. That is what a funded company is: an entity deliberately spending ahead of revenue. The point of knowing is that it tells you which levers matter, and how much time you have to pull them.
- 01Test the growth lever first. How much faster would revenue have to grow to get there in time? If the answer is 3% to 5% a month, that is a sales and pricing conversation. If it is 20%, it is not a lever.
- 02Test the cost lever. Hold fixed costs flat and see what happens. In many companies, simply not adding the next four hires moves break-even forward by quarters.
- 03Test the margin lever. A few points of contribution margin, from pricing or cost to serve, buys less time than the other two but is usually the easiest to actually deliver, and it compounds with every rupee of revenue after it.
- 04Then decide about funding, with the gap quantified: how much cash, for how many months, to reach a point where the business covers itself or is clearly fundable.
Founders who arrive at an investor conversation with that arithmetic already done are treated differently from founders who arrive with a runway number and a hope.
The three levers, compared
Taking the same illustrative company, here is what each lever does on its own. Break-even in the base case is month 18.
| Change, from the base case | Break-even moves to | What it takes |
|---|---|---|
| Revenue growth 6% to 8% a month | Month 12 | Roughly a third more new business every month, sustained |
| Fixed cost growth 2% to 0% | Month 12 | No net additions to the cost base for a year |
| Contribution margin 70% to 75% | Month 16 | Five points from pricing or cost to serve |
| All three together | Month 9 | A different company, and a plausible one |
Two things stand out. Growth and cost discipline each pull break-even forward by six months here, while five points of margin buys two. And the two strongest levers are the ones founders reach for last, because both mean saying no to something the team wants.
The other lesson is about combinations. Most companies that get from default dead to default alive do it with three modest changes rather than one dramatic one, because modest changes are the ones a team can actually deliver.
Where the simple version misleads
- Growth is not smooth. Real months are lumpy, and a straight compounding curve hides the quarter where nothing closed.
- Costs move in steps. A new office, a senior hire or a cloud contract arrives all at once, not as a percentage each month.
- Collections are not revenue. A business can reach break-even on the P&L and still be short of cash if customers pay in 70 days. That is the weekly cash forecast's job.
- Working capital is not modelled. Growth that needs inventory or deposits consumes cash the calculator does not see.
- One-off items, such as annual software renewals, audit fees and advance tax, sit outside the monthly pattern.
- The horizon is five years. Anything that relies on year four is a hope rather than a plan.
So treat the output as the shape of the problem rather than a forecast. The value is in the comparison between the two dates, and in how quickly the verdict changes when you move a single input.
Using it as a monthly check, not a one-off
The single number is less interesting than the direction it moves. Run it each month after the close, with the growth rate from your own trailing six months, and keep the answers in a row.
A break-even month that keeps moving further away, month after month, is the clearest early warning a company gets. It usually means cost growth has quietly overtaken revenue growth, which nobody notices from the P&L alone because both lines are going up.
A break-even month that holds steady, or moves closer, tells you the plan is working even in a quarter that felt slow. That is worth knowing too, because the months that feel worst are not always the months that are worst.
It is also the right number to put in front of a board. Runway invites a conversation about how long you have. The break-even month invites a conversation about what would move it, which is the more useful hour.
Why the question matters more now
For several years the Indian market rewarded growth funded by the next round. That assumption loosened, and investors began asking about efficiency and the path to profitability much earlier in a company's life. The question is no longer only whether you can grow, but whether you could survive if the next round took a year longer than planned.
A company that can answer with an actual month, and with the two or three levers that would move it, is answering a question most founders in the room cannot. That is worth more than any presentation of the market opportunity.
There is a second reason to care, which has nothing to do with investors. Knowing you could get to break-even, even in a version of the plan you would rather not run, changes how a founder makes every other decision. It turns a term sheet into something you can walk away from, a large customer's demand for 90-day terms into something you can decline, and a bad quarter into a setback rather than an emergency.