Fintech startup Clear raises $75 mn in funding at valuation of $700-800 mn

Company says its SaaS platform has grown 5x in the past 18 months

Fintech startup Clear (formerly called ClearTax) has raised $75 million in its Series C round led by Kora Capital, alongside global fintech Stripe, Alua Capital, Think Investments and existing investors, the company said on Sunday. According to a source close to the company, the funding happened at a valuation range of $700-800 million. Clear declined to comment on the same.

Its proprietary platform ClearTax, which facilitates the filing of both income tax and GST returns, is currently used by one million small businesses, 3,000 large enterprises and over 50,000 tax professionals. The company aims to serve over 10,000 large enterprises and 10 million small businesses over the next couple of years.

Clear said its SaaS platform has witnessed a 5x growth in the last 18 months adding more than 3,000 large enterprise customers. It also saw a surge in usage with over 1 million small businesses on the platform. The Clear platform now processes over 10 per cent of India’s business invoices with a GMV of $400 billion.

It posted revenue of Rs 60 crore in FY20, a 163 per cent surge over the previous year’s Rs 22.8 crore. It has not yet filed its FY21 annual returns.

Archit Gupta, founder and CEO of Clear, said the company’s revenue doubled in FY21 over the previous financial year and is set to double again in FY22.

Clear recently acquired yBANQ, marking its expansion into B2B payments. Gupta said the company is also planning to enter the invoice discounting space to disburse B2B loans.

Founded in 2011 by three friends -- Archit Gupta, Srivatsan Chari, and Ankit Solanki -- ClearTax was also the first Y-Combinator funded company of India in 2014. "Being the first company to be funded by Y-Combinator is a great turning point in our journey. As far as the potential of becoming a unicorn is concerned, we believe our company will be worth a lot more than a billion dollars one day, and that belief is shared by more people now," Gupta told  Business Standard in 2019.