ClearTax, a fin-tech startup which helps users deal with hassles of filing income tax and returns online, has raised $1.3 million in a seed round from some of the prominent angel investors from Silicon Valley.
The list of investors who participated in the current round includes PayPal cofounder Max Levchin and Scott Banister — an early investor in Facebook and Uber. Other investors include Naval Ravikant, founder of AngelList; WhatsApp business head Neeraj Arora; and Ruchi Sanghvi, vice president – Operations at Dropbox; among others.
The newly infused capital will be used by the company to develop and launch new products, further expand its team size and building its mobile strategy.
Max Lavechin, who invested in this round, said,
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.
Archit Gupta, chief executive of ClearTax, said,
We are in the process of launching new products, catering to our SME and enterprise clientele, which will focus on invoicing and payroll. Our mobile app will be out next month as well.
Founded in 2011 by Archit Gupta, his chartered accountant father Raja Ram Gupta, Srivatsan Chari and Ankit Solanki, ClearTax is the only India-focused startup which is backed by Y-Combinator. Its aim is to delight customers with simplicity, accuracy and getting rid of the notion that taxes are complex.
The start-up currently has a team of 55 people, working out of two office – Delhi and Bengaluru. It plans to add an additional 150 employees by end of May 2016.
The platform helps Individuals file their tax returns online via their website. On the website, users upload their Form-16 PDF and the ClearTax software prepares the tax return automatically. As per the company, it processed tax return e-filings for over 3,00,000 individuals in assessment year 2014-15 and in the year 2015-16, around 1 million users filed their returns using the website.
Last month, the company launched ClearTDS.com, a one-stop solution for start-ups dealing with TDS returns filing, form generation and correction. It auto-imports all deductor/deductee details through Conso file/TRACES and can generate multiple Form-16s within minutes, thus saving time and costs.
ClearTax is now strengthening its senior management team and has roped in three top talent from Flipkart – Prasanth Nair, Aakash Bapna, and Jai Santosh to help propel us the company to the next phase of growth. Prashant Nair will be vice president – engineering, apart from heading the product and technology group at ClearTax. while Aakash Bapna and Jai Santosh have been roped in as senior software engineers.
