SUMMARY
Will Roll Out New Products & Hire Engineers
FinTech startup ClearTax that facilitates users to file taxes and returns online, has raised $12 Mn (INR 80 Cr) in Series A round of funding led by Ravi Adusumalli of SAIF Partners.
The startup will use the newly raised capital to build and launch new products, hire 100+ engineers and build its executive leadership team. It aims to triple its overall team size to 300 employees by the end of this year.
Archit Gupta, founder & CEO of 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.”
ClearTax, which has already established itself as a dominant player in the tax returns e-filing space, plans to to tap greater opportunities in the space of Consumer and Business taxes, Tax savings and Investments. It plans to roll out new products to consolidate its presence across the country by extending its services to 25 lakh users by the year end. The startup claims that over 10 lakh users e-filed their tax returns through ClearTax during the 2015-16 fiscal.
ClearTax was founded in 2011 by Archit Gupta, Raja Ram Gupta, Srivatsan Chari, and Ankit Solanki. It provides a full range of services to clients from helping them file their tax returns, incorporating companies and undertaking service tax registrations among others. It claims that over 1 Mn Indian taxpayers uses its platform to e-file their tax returns.
Earlier in May and April this year, ClearTax had raised $2 Mn (INR 13.3 Cr) in pre-Series A round from FF Angel and Sequoia Capital and $1.3 Mn (INR 8.6 Cr) in seed funding from PayPal co-founder Max Levchin and Scott Banister, respectively.
Co-incidentally, it is also one of the few Indian startups backed by the US-based startup accelerator Y Combinator. It raised $120K in seed funding from Y Combinator in July 2014. The startup has also been backed by One97 Communications in October 2015.
Other major players in the tax-filing space include Quicko and Taxsmile, among roughly 15 other service providers for e-filing including Income Tax department portals.
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