ClearTax in Talks with Tiger Global to Lead $100 Mn Funding Round

Bangalore-based ClearTax, an online platform providing solutions for Income Tax filing, GST and Mutual Fund Investments, is in talks with New York-based Tiger Global to lead a $100 million funding round, said a report by Economic Times, citing three people with direct knowledge of the development.

The possible fund raising is expected to value ClearTax at $750-$850 million, where Tiger Global is likely to lead the round investing $60 million, while the rest will be contributed by the existing investors of 10-year-old ClearTax, the report said.

ClearTax will use the funds to accelerate growth and expand its product basket, said the report citing one its sources.

ClearTax is the first Y-Combinator funded company of India and counts Max Levchin, founder of Paypal, Vijay Shekhar Sharma of Paytm, Neeraj Arora of Whatsapp and Peterson of Flexport as its mentors and Investors.

In 2019, the company raised $50 million (Rs 400 crore) in a Series B funding round led by Composite Capital. Its other investors include Elevation Capital, Sequoia Capital India, Paypal co-founder Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund and Naval Ravikant’s AngelList.

Founded in 2011 by Archit Gupta, Srivatsan Chari and Ankit Solanki, ClearTax  offers solutions, including GST and e-way bill software, along with business incorporation and compliance services for enterprises. It also launched a platform for tax savings and mutual fund investment in January 2020.

In 2018, ClearTax acquired TOOTL app that helps to personalize content.

ClearTax Raises $50 Mn in Series B Funding led by Hong Kong-based Composite Capital

New Delhi-based online tax filing and compliance startup ClearTax has raised $50 million (~₹300 crore) in Series B round of funding led by Hong Kong-based Composite Capital as it looks to expand its product and services offerings to customers on its platform.

The company plans to utilize the freshly raised capital to accelerate growth and expand its current offering of products and services for millennials on its platform. It also plans to invest in tech infrastructure and double engineering professionals with the new round of investment.

Backed by Sequoia Capital India and Paypal co-founder Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund Angel, ClearTax had last raised $12 million in Series-A investment round led by Ravi Adusumalli of SAIF Partners, in June 2016. The startup has raised a total of $65.4 million in funding over six rounds including this one, which is largest of all.

Founded in 2011 by Archit Gupta, Srivatsan Chari and Ankit Solanki, ClearTax was the first Indian startup to be funded by Y Combinator. It also counts Max Levchin, Scott Bannister, Neeraj Arora, Ruchi Sanghvi and Naval Ravikant as investors.

ClearTax claims 2.5 million individual taxpayers utilised its service this year with millenials forming a majority of its user base. On the B2B front, over 100,000 businesses and 25,000 chartered accountant firms utilise its GST platform since the introduction of the scheme.

“With this new investment, we have more firepower to focus on our mission, accelerate our growth trajectory and continue to invest in technology and innovate our platforms to meet expanding customer needs,” said Archit Gupta, Founder and CEO of ClearTax, in a statement.

On this investment, Kanush Chaudhary, managing director at Composite Capital, said "We are excited to partner with the ClearTax team and support their continued growth. ClearTax continues to build exceptional solutions that simplify tax fillings for both individuals and businesses in India."

Launched in 2016, Composite Capital Management is an investment firm focused on consumer, technology and transportation companies globally. The firm has made three investments so far including ClearTax, which is its maiden bet in India.

Source - LiveMint

[Top Featured Image - blog.cleartax.in]

Peter Thiel-Backed ClearTax Acquires Bengaluru-based Startup TOOTL

ClearTax, a New Delhi-based fintech startup that helps individuals and businesses file tax returns online, has acquired Bengaluru-based Greeblu Enterprises Pvt. Ltd, which runs TOOTL, an app that helps to personalize content.

The terms and size of the deal have not been disclosed.

ClearTax said in a statement it would use TOOTL’s technology to curate personalized tax, finance and compliance related content on its website by integrating TOOTL’s back-end tech stacks.

This is ClearTax’s first acquisition since its inception in 2011. The firm had raised $12 million in its series A funding round led by SAIF Partners in June 2016.

It raised an additional $3.3 million in 2016 from Sequoia Capital India, Paypal co-founder Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund Angel, PayPal co-founder Max Levchin, and WhatsApp’s business head Neeraj Arora among others.

ClearTax was also one of the early Indian start-ups to enter Silicon Valley-based tech accelerator Y Combinator in 2014. Although the firm started off as a tax compliance and advisory service, it later branched into a wide portfolio of products and services like mutual funds, GST software, E-WayBill generator, Digital Signature Certificate (DSC) utility and business compliance services.

Currently, ClearTax claims to have over 2.5 million registered users using its tax filing and compliance services, while its GST compliance solution is being used by 360,000 businesses, 22,000 accountants tax professionals, and over 500 large enterprises.

ClearTax said TOOTL’s acquisition was aimed at improving the overall user experience on the platform and that it plans to add more tweaks to improve the user experience.

Launched by Arpit Mehta and Parijat Banerjee, TOOTL is a mobile app that understands user preferences to provide relevant content feeds across categories like movies and entertainment, sports, events, and others.

Archit Gupta, chief executive of Cleartax, said TOOTL’s algorithm has added great value to ClearTax’s existing systems, especially around content.

“We will utilize the TOOTL technology to enhance customer engagement and provide tailored content based on income, financial goals, age and other parameters. This would help our customers make informed financial decisions, taking us a step closer to our mission of simplifying finance for Indians,” Gupta added.

Notably, in last one month this is third fintech startup acquisition, as last month US-based digital payment company Wibmo Inc has bought Gurgaon-based mobile peer-to-peer (P2P) payment solution startup Mypoolin in a cash and stock deal valued above $1 million. Prior to this, UK-based firm Page Solutions acquired Mumbai-based blockchain startup Aetlo Tech for undisclosed amount.

The above news was first reported in Live Mint.

Peter Thiel-Backed ClearTax Acquires Bengaluru-based Startup TOOTL

ClearTax, a New Delhi-based fintech startup that helps individuals and businesses file tax returns online, has acquired Bengaluru-based Greeblu Enterprises Pvt. Ltd, which runs TOOTL, an app that helps to personalize content.

The terms and size of the deal have not been disclosed.

ClearTax said in a statement it would use TOOTL’s technology to curate personalized tax, finance and compliance related content on its website by integrating TOOTL’s back-end tech stacks.

This is ClearTax’s first acquisition since its inception in 2011. The firm had raised $12 million in its series A funding round led by SAIF Partners in June 2016.

It raised an additional $3.3 million in 2016 from Sequoia Capital India, Paypal co-founder Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund Angel, PayPal co-founder Max Levchin, and WhatsApp’s business head Neeraj Arora among others.

ClearTax was also one of the early Indian start-ups to enter Silicon Valley-based tech accelerator Y Combinator in 2014. Although the firm started off as a tax compliance and advisory service, it later branched into a wide portfolio of products and services like mutual funds, GST software, E-WayBill generator, Digital Signature Certificate (DSC) utility and business compliance services.

Currently, ClearTax claims to have over 2.5 million registered users using its tax filing and compliance services, while its GST compliance solution is being used by 360,000 businesses, 22,000 accountants tax professionals, and over 500 large enterprises.

ClearTax said TOOTL’s acquisition was aimed at improving the overall user experience on the platform and that it plans to add more tweaks to improve the user experience.

Launched by Arpit Mehta and Parijat Banerjee, TOOTL is a mobile app that understands user preferences to provide relevant content feeds across categories like movies and entertainment, sports, events, and others.

Archit Gupta, chief executive of Cleartax, said TOOTL’s algorithm has added great value to ClearTax’s existing systems, especially around content.

“We will utilize the TOOTL technology to enhance customer engagement and provide tailored content based on income, financial goals, age and other parameters. This would help our customers make informed financial decisions, taking us a step closer to our mission of simplifying finance for Indians,” Gupta added.

Notably, in last one month this is third fintech startup acquisition, as last month US-based digital payment company Wibmo Inc has bought Gurgaon-based mobile peer-to-peer (P2P) payment solution startup Mypoolin in a cash and stock deal valued above $1 million. Prior to this, UK-based firm Page Solutions acquired Mumbai-based blockchain startup Aetlo Tech for undisclosed amount.

The above news was first reported in Live Mint.

ClearTax Raises $12M in Series A Round from SAIF Partners

Once more underlining why it is considered to be one of the most exciting FinTech ventures in the country, ClearTax, India’s leading Income Tax Returns e-filing website, has announced the successful conclusion of its $12 million Series-A investment round. The funding round, was led by Ravi Adusumalli of SAIF Partners, will be chiefly utilised by ClearTax to build and launch new products, hire 100+ engineers and build its executive leadership team.

ClearTax will be leveraging the capital raised to triple its overall team size to 300 employees by the end of the year. Top talent from India and the Silicon Valley is expected to be hired in the coming months as the company looks to scale up its executive leadership as well as strengthen its employee base.

Commenting on the capital raised, Mr Archit Gupta, Founder & CEO ClearTax said, “Our Series-A investment is a strong validation of the ClearTax vision and demonstrates the clear market leadership ClearTax has. Instead of spending the capital raised on advertising, we’ll be investing in building world class technology products, and in top notch engineering talent from within India & Silicon Valley. As a founder, I’m deeply excited the impact fintech will have on India and I’m proud of our team for reaching this milestone.”

Having already established itself as the most dominant player in the tax returns e-filing space, ClearTax will also be looking to tap into greater opportunities in the space of Consumer and Business taxes, Tax savings and Investments. Newer products are expected to be rolled out in the near future as ClearTax looks to consolidate its presence across the country by extending its services to 25 lakh users by the year end. Over 10 Lakh users e-filed their tax returns through ClearTax during the 2015-16 fiscal.

Ravi Adusumalli of SAIF Partners said, “The ClearTax team has demonstrated distinctive growth over last five years to build the largest tax filing platform in India. We are very excited to partner with Archit and team as they translate their market leadership in tax filing space to become one of the largest fin-tech platforms in India. We look forward to working with the Cleartax team in their journey to create a wide range of offerings for retail and SME customers.”

The latest development follows close on heels of recent angel investment into ClearTax by leading Silicon Valley angels such as Max Levchin, Neeraj Arora, Scott Bannister and Cyan Bannister as well as a $2 million pre-Series A round that saw participation from Sequoia Capital, Founders Fund. The Bangalore-based venture has already earmarked machine learning and deep tech as its top priorities in product and technology. ClearTax is also building out its executive leadership team in the areas of Business and Engineering. Recently executives from Flipkart & InMobi have joined ClearTax in the core team.

About ClearTax

Started in 2011, ClearTax aims to simplify financial lives of Indian taxpayers, both Individuals and Businesses.

ClearTax is India’s leading tax filing platform. ClearTax is used by over 1 Million Indian Taxpayers to e-File their Tax Returns making it India’s largest player in the space. Taxpayers just have to upload their Form-16 PDF, and their Tax Return is prepared automatically by ClearTax software within seconds.

Besides Individuals, over 10,000 CA firms and thousands of businesses across India use the ClearTax platform for Tax & TDS returns.

ClearTax was founded by Archit Gupta along with his father Raja Ram Gupta, a Chartered Accountant; Srivatsan Chari; and Ankit Solanki. Archit, co-founder & CEO is an IIT Guwahati alum with a BTech in Computer Science. He holds a Masters in Computer Science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

ClearTax was Y-Combinator’s first India focused investment. It also counts Max Levchin, Scott Bannister, Neeraj Arora, Ruchi Sanghvi and Naval Ravikant as investors.

ClearTax Gets $2M in Series A Funding from Sequoia Capital India and Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund Angel

ClearTax, India’s leading Income Tax Returns e-filing website, has raised $2 million in a series A round of funding from venture capital firms Sequoia Capital India, and Paypal co-founder Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund Angel, a seed stage venture firm. This is Founders Fund Angel’s first investment in an Indian startup. It’s parent arm, Founders Fund, has invested in firms like data analytics startup Palantir, payments company Stripe and fitness wearable maker Misfit.


Defmacro Software Pvt. Ltd. backed ClearTax has recently raised $1.3 million in angel funding from Silicon Valley-based angel investors, including PayPal co-founder Max Levchin, Whatsapp’s business head Neeraj Arora, and AngelList founder Naval Ravikant, among others.

ClearTax helps Individuals file their Tax returns online via their website – all a user has to do is upload their Form-16 PDF and the ClearTax software prepares the tax return instantly and automatically. The startup processed tax return e-filings for 300,000 individuals in assessment year 2014-15. An estimated 1 million users filed their returns using the site for the assessment year 2015-16. The company was founded in 2011 by Archit Gupta along with his father Raja Ram Gupta, a Chartered Accountant; Srivatsan Chari; and Ankit Solanki. Archit is an IIT Guwahati alumnus who went on to pursue a Masters in Computer Science from the University of Wisconsin- Madison.

The firm, which currently employs 95 people, plans to add about 200 more in the next six months. It claims 1 million users for its product for individuals, and about 10,000 chartered accountant firms. “We hope to grow the user base to about 50 lakh people by 2017. We want to fix people’s poor relationship with their money because of the complexity involved in handling in it, by making the whole process simple,” said Archit Gupta, chief executive officer, ClearTax.

Recently, the company has also launched its 2G optimized mobile app to file taxes even in offline mode.

Image Source: ShutterStock

ClearTax Raises $1.3M in Seed Funding from a Group of Silicon Valley Investors

Bengaluru-based financial technology startup ClearTax has raised $1.3 million in seed funding from a group of prominent Silicon Valley investors, a list that includes PayPal co-founder Max Levchin and Scott Banister, an early investor in Facebook and Uber.

Other investors who have participated in the round, include Naval Ravikant, founder of AngelList, the crowdfunding social network for early-stage investors; WhatsApp business head Neeraj Arora; and Ruchi Sanghvi, vice president - Operations at Dropbox; among others.

This is the first investment by Levchin in an Indian startup, The five year-old Bengaluru-based company will use the proceeds towards new product launches, expanding the size of its team, and further building its mobile strategy.

The company is in the process of launching new products, catering to SME and enterprise clientele, which will focus on invoicing and payroll. Its mobile app will be out next month as well.

Earlier this month, ClearTax had brought three senior Flipkart executives on board for various leadership positions across its technology functions. Prasanth Nair, a former director at Flipkart, joined as vice president-engineering, with Jai Santosh, who led the Flipkart Lite team, and Aakash Bapna, who was also roped in.

"ClearTax is the dominant market leader in taxes in India with a strong focus on consumers and SMEs. We strongly believe in the Indian market, where the median age is 25 and fin-tech products on the mobile will see deep adoption," Levchin said.

ClearTax is a technology company specializing in the ‘Tax’ domain. Its software helps individuals prepare and file their income tax return in the shortest time while maximizing their tax deductions. The company began its journey in 2011 and in 2014 it was incubated at Y Combinator. Currently it has 1.5 million users registered on its platform.

ClearTax's product line includes three type of products - ClearTax (Helps individuals e-file their income tax return in the shortest time while maximising their tax returns); ClearTDS (Provides organisations a cloud based platform to file TDS returns and generate Form 16 for employees) and TaxCloud (Designed for Chartered Accountant firms to help their clients file their tax returns and TDS returns).

The startup aims "is to delight our customers with simplicity, accuracy and getting rid of the notion that taxes are complex."

ClearTax Raises $1.3M in Seed Funding from a Group of Silicon Valley Investors

Bengaluru-based financial technology startup ClearTax has raised $1.3 million in seed funding from a group of prominent Silicon Valley investors, a list that includes PayPal co-founder Max Levchin and Scott Banister, an early investor in Facebook and Uber.

Other investors who have participated in the round, include Naval Ravikant, founder of AngelList, the crowdfunding social network for early-stage investors; WhatsApp business head Neeraj Arora; and Ruchi Sanghvi, vice president - Operations at Dropbox; among others.

This is the first investment by Levchin in an Indian startup, The five year-old Bengaluru-based company will use the proceeds towards new product launches, expanding the size of its team, and further building its mobile strategy.

The company is in the process of launching new products, catering to SME and enterprise clientele, which will focus on invoicing and payroll. Its mobile app will be out next month as well.

Earlier this month, ClearTax had brought three senior Flipkart executives on board for various leadership positions across its technology functions. Prasanth Nair, a former director at Flipkart, joined as vice president-engineering, with Jai Santosh, who led the Flipkart Lite team, and Aakash Bapna, who was also roped in.

"ClearTax is the dominant market leader in taxes in India with a strong focus on consumers and SMEs. We strongly believe in the Indian market, where the median age is 25 and fin-tech products on the mobile will see deep adoption," Levchin said.

ClearTax is a technology company specializing in the ‘Tax’ domain. Its software helps individuals prepare and file their income tax return in the shortest time while maximizing their tax deductions. The company began its journey in 2011 and in 2014 it was incubated at Y Combinator. Currently it has 1.5 million users registered on its platform.

ClearTax's product line includes three type of products - ClearTax (Helps individuals e-file their income tax return in the shortest time while maximising their tax returns); ClearTDS (Provides organisations a cloud based platform to file TDS returns and generate Form 16 for employees) and TaxCloud (Designed for Chartered Accountant firms to help their clients file their tax returns and TDS returns).

The startup aims "is to delight our customers with simplicity, accuracy and getting rid of the notion that taxes are complex."