Clear Acquires Compliance Platform CimplyFive In An All-Cash Deal

Fintech SaaS platform Clear has acquired CimplyFive in an all-cash deal for an undisclosed amount. CimplyFive is a cloud-hosted application that automates company law and SEBI Listing Obligations and Disclosure Requirements (LODR) compliance.

With this acquisition, the enterprise customers of Clear (earlier ClearTax) will have access to the compliance risk management software that eliminates many procedural non-compliance under the Companies Act, 2013. 

Once integrated, Clear’s expanded product suite will offer a better offering to its over 5,000 enterprise customers, which includes both Indian corporations and global enterprises with subsidiaries in India.

CimplyFive, founded in 2014 by Shankar Jaganathan, has received investments from prominent ex-CFOs like Mohandas Pai, Suresh Senapaty. It has numerous enterprise customers including Fabindia, Premji Invest, Crompton, Tata-Hitachi, TVS Group, Jubilant Group and Wipro, among others. 

Post-acquisition, CimplyFive’s founder and the team will function as an independent platform, but as a part of Clear. Jaganathan will continue to lead the business. 

In a statement, Clear said that the constant changes in the country’s corporate laws and SEBI Regulations require enterprises to be agile, and it was often asked by its customers for adjoining compliance solutions. 

“CimplyFive will further Clear’s CFO compliance suite to other areas, beyond direct and indirect tax,” it added. 

Speaking about the acquisition, Clear founder and CEO Archit Gupta said, “This acquisition will not just make our compliance suite larger but also stronger. We are committed to serving the CFO’s office comprehensively.”

Gupta, along with Srivatsan Chari, Ankit Solanki, and Raja Ram Gupta, founded Clear in 2011 with the mission of simplifying finance. The company claims to have a user base of over 6 Mn Indians. It is also used by 50K tax professionals, 1 Mn small businesses, and 5K large enterprises. 

For small and large businesses, Clear’s product suite covers invoicing, GST, a range of managed services, and working capital solutions. For tax professionals, it offers comprehensive GST, income tax and TDS solutions. For individual users, it offers tax and wealth management solutions. 

Clear has made four acquisitions so far, which include YBANQ in 2021 and Karvy’s GST business in 2020.

CimplyFive is its second acquisition in 2022 after the Xpedize deal in March. The Xpedize acquisition marked Clear’s foray into credit for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and business-to-business (B2B) payments. 

In October last year, Clear raised its Series C funding round of $140 Mn. Its investors include Stripe, Y Combinator, Composite Capital, Elevation Capital, Sequoia Capital, Kora Capital and Founders Fund.