India-based FinTech software-as-a-service (SaaS) company Clear announced Monday a $75 million Series C fundraise led by Kora Capital, Stripe, Alua Capital, Think Investments, and existing investors.
The funds will be used to accelerate Clear’s expansion into Business to Business (B2B) credit and payments plus expansion into international markets, Clear said in a statement.
According to Clear, its SaaS platform has witnessed a phenomenal 5 times growth in the last 18 months adding at least 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 percent of India’s business invoices with a gross merchandise value (GMV) of $400 billion.
Clear is widely known in India as the maker of ClearTax (digital tax platform for consumers). Indian businesses are rapidly digitizing with a strong tailwind from the Indian government’s push. Accelerated by a fully digital rollout of Goods and Service Taxes (GST) and mandatory e-invoicing, Clear is India’s dominant SaaS provider in this space. Clear recently acquired yBANQ, marking its expansion into B2B payments. The latest funding will help propel the company’s expansion in payments and credit and take its product suite to international markets where similar shifts are taking place.
The company aims to serve over 10,000 large enterprises and 10 million small businesses over the next couple of years.
“We welcome Kora, Stripe, and our other incoming investors. Kora has strong experience in technology players in emerging markets and Stripe is a global technology company that builds economic infrastructure for the internet–we are excited to learn from both of them. India is on a massive digitisation journey and we are fortunate to be in the perfect storm of electronic invoicing, GST, Unified Payments Interface (UPI), cheap mobile internet and rapid adoption of technology due to Covid-19. We are doubling down on our SaaS platform to help businesses with collateral free debt and payments. This funding also gives us fuel for our international expansion,” Clear Founder and Chief Executive Officer Archit Gupta said.
Kora Founder and Chief Investment Officer Nitin Saigal also said: “We are excited to partner with Clear as they innovate at scale in the Indian SaaS ecosystem, enabling Enterprises and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to automate their workflows around taxation, invoicing and several other adjacencies. We look forward to Clear’s journey in the Indian and global markets.”
Clear is India’s leading Fintech SaaS company with the mission of simplifying finances for Indian businesses and individuals. It is trusted by over 5 million Indian taxpayers, more than 100,000 tax practitioners, 600,000 small businesses and 2,000 large businesses and brands.
It has raised $65 million in equity capital investment since its inception. The company was incubated in Y Combinator and is funded by Silicon Valley investors, including PayPal co-founders Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, Max Levchin, and Scott Banister. Clear’s investors include Composite Capital, Sequoia Capital, and SAIF Partners.
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