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cleartax

“Can an Indian tax-filing consumer app become the enterprise finance OS for the invoice lifecycle across emerging-market e-invoicing regimes?”

Founded2011
HQBangalore, Karnataka, India
FoundersArchit Gupta
Total raised$140M+
Latest roundSeries C, 2021
Valuation$700M+ (2021)
IndustryVertical SaaS / Tax & Compliance
The story

Founded 2011 as a consumer ITR (income-tax return) filing tool, ClearTax pivoted decisively into B2B tax-tech after India's 2017 GST rollout, becoming a leading GST Suvidha Provider (GSP) and IRP. In 2021-22 it rebranded to 'Clear' and repositioned as a 'connected finance cloud' spanning e-invoicing, TDS, accounts payable, invoice discounting (Xpedize), and vendor management for large enterprises. In 2025 it sunset the CA/SME GST offering and migrated those users to Zoho/OctaGST/Computax — a clear upmarket move to focus on enterprise finance workflows and international e-invoicing (Saudi Arabia, UAE, France, Malaysia).

Last 12 months
2025-10
2025-09
Product timeline
2011
ClearTax founded in Delhi by Archit Gupta to simplify Indian income-tax return filing· launch
2014
Joined Y Combinator — first India-focused startup in the batch· launch
2016
Raised $12M Series A led by SAIF Partners to expand into broader financial services· funding
2017
Launched GST compliance product following India's GST rollout· pivot
2021
Achieved 'Built for NetSuite' status for Clear GST + e-invoicing· launch
2021
Raised $75M Series C at $700M valuation; Stripe invests· funding
2022
Rebranded from ClearTax to Clear; positioned as connected finance cloud· pivot
2022
Launched Xpedize (invoice discounting) via Xpedize Ventures Pvt Ltd subsidiary· lending
2025
Sunset of CA/SME GST product; migration to Zoho, OctaGST, Computax as transition service providers· pivot
Regulated entities
5
regulatory licences held by cleartax
Licence types, jurisdictions and registered entities are in the Embedded Finance Index report.
The stack
4 layers disclosed in cleartax’s embedded-finance stack
Payments / PSP
Clear Payment Links (self-operated)
Money movement
in the full report
Lending
in the full report
Accounting
in the full report
Accounting gap: none
7 more providers across 3 layers, with confidence-scored evidence and source URLs, are in the Embedded Finance Index report.