Strengthening its position as India’s leading Income Tax Returns e-filing website,
ClearTax, has secured investment of Rs 13.5 crore ($2 million) in its pre-Series A funding round. The round saw participation by Sequoia Capital and Founders Fund Angel, each investing $1 million into the Bangalore-based venture.
FF Angel is Founders Fund’s early stage investment vehicle. Founders Fund invests in science and technology companies solving the world’s most difficult problems. The firm and its partners have been early backers of some of the most prominent companies of the past decade, including SpaceX, Palantir, Facebook, and Airbnb. Founders Fund pursues a founder-friendly investment strategy that provides maximum support with minimum interference. The funding round also marked the debut India investment for the San Francisco-based firm.
Speaking on the announcement, Archit Gupta Founder & CEO, ClearTax, said,
“We are excited to announce the successful closure of our latest funding round. Both Sequoia Capital and Founders Fund are the top VCs in the world: they have deep understanding of the fintech space, bring in a lot of global experience in nurturing companies. We also get to now work with the PayPal Mafia!
We are on a mission to simplify financial lives for India. Taxes is the first step for us, helping millions of Indians e-File and save on Taxes. We have three strengths: Deep domain expertise in finance, consumer design and software. With this round, we’ll aggressively invest more in new products which help Indians save more on Taxes”.
ClearTax is used by over 1 million Indian Taxpayers to e-File their Tax Returns making it India’s largest player in the space. Taxpayers just have to upload their Form-16 PDF, and their Tax Return is prepared automatically by ClearTax software within seconds.
With over 3% of the 3.4 crore tax-paying citizens of India already on ClearTax, the new round of investment will bolster the company’s growth, and help launch more products. Besides Individual taxpayers, over 10,000 CA firms and thousands of businesses across India use the ClearTax platform for e-Filing and TDS returns.
The latest investment is not the first time that a leading global investor is choosing the company to make their foray into the Indian Fintech market.
The company recently raised Rs 8.6 crore ($1.3 million) angel investment by leading Silicon Valley investors such as Max Levchin, Neeraj Arora, Scott and Cyan Bannister. In 2014, ClearTax became the first India-focused investment for US-based Y Combinator.
