ClearTax

ClearTax is a Bangalore-based Fintech company offering financial services and Software as a service (SaaS) in India with focus on taxation SaaS. It provides cloud-based products for GST, e-Invoicing, e-Waybill, income tax, investments and tax deductions for enterprises, MSMEs, tax experts and tax-payers. The company aims to simplify finances, save money and time for Indian businesses and individuals.

ClearTax was founded in 2011 by Archit Gupta along with his father Raja Ram Gupta, Srivatsan Chari, and Ankit Solanki. The idea to start a platform to simplify e-filing of income tax returns occurred to Archit when he was unable to file his tax returns online from the US in 2010 through the Income Tax Department's utility.

The company first started operations from New Delhi and later on, in 2014, moved their headquarters to Bangalore. As of February 2021, the company has operational offices in both cities as well as presence in Mumbai, with a combined team strength of over 900 employees across verticals like engineering, design, product management, and marketing. In 2014, ClearTax became the first India-focused startup to be funded by US based global accelerator Y-Combinator and later featured in their top companies list of 2019 that have emerged as leaders of their respective sectors. In 2016, the platform launched an Android app to facilitate e-filing of income tax return. In June 2017, the company launched a Bill book software for small and medium-sized businesses that enables preparing GST-compliant invoices. Subsequently, they launched an offline calculator for SMEs and startups determine their monthly GST payout. In May 2018, ClearTax launched ‘Tally Connector’ which enables users to import accounting data from Tally to ClearTax GST in a single click.In June 2019, the company launched GSTR-9 filing software, to enable chartered accountants and businesses do GSTR-9 filing.

In August 2020, the company introduced an e-invoicing product for Invoice Reference Number (IRN) generation and e-invoice management that can be integrated with any ERP. Later on, they launched a mobile app called ‘Black’ in the investment space. The app enables the user to save taxes, grow wealth and file tax returns, in addition to another application called ClearTax Pro that essentially acts as a practice manager and tax companion for tax experts.ClearTax was featured in the 2020 New York Times' CB Insights report within the list of 50 start-ups seen as potential unicorns in coming years.

The company announced it has served over 2.5 million individual taxpayers in 2018. In 2020, they announced that over 6 million ITRs were filed, and $4 billion payments were made annually. ClearTax' products enable individuals and businesses to manage all of their compliances and taxes and allows businesses of all sizes to connect with the network (suppliers, distributors and customers) and manage their cash flows better. They provide financial services products (financing, payments) to further help with cash flows, as well as aiding accountants who can partner with ClearTax to sell software and financial service products to their clients.The product suite serves four major customer segments: Enterprises, MSMEs, Tax Experts and individuals. The various offerings are available across multiple form factors: web, desktop, APIs and mobile applications.

ClearTax operates its product suites with Application Service Providers (ASP) license and GST Suvidha Providers (GSPs) license provided by the GST Network (GSTN), the nodal agency in charge of the Securities and Exchange Board of India. It has also obtained a Registered Investment Adviser (RIA) license from the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) to deliver stock broking and wealth management services via their recently launched “Black” application.

Since its launch, ClearTax has raised over $65 million through five funding rounds.

TOOTL: Acquired in April 2018, an infotainment app offers personalized content using predictive tools technology that is supposed to assist ClearTax to curate personalized tax, finance and compliance related content on its website by integrating TOOTL's back-end tech stacks.

Dose FM: Acquired in October 2019, an audio streaming platform to strengthen mobile capabilities with focus on creation of an engagement platform for ClearTax's business customers to file their GST returns.

Karvy - GST filing Services: The GST software business of Karvy Data Management Services, part of the financial services group Karvy, was acquired in March 2020 by ClearTax in order to gain through the addition of enterprise customers for its GST related services.