Clear Raises $75 Mn Series C From Kora, Stripe And Others The funds will be used to accelerate Clear's expansion into B2B credit and payments plus expansion into international markets
By Prabhjeet Bhatla •
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Clear (formerly known as ClearTax), a fintech SaaS company, on Monday, announced a $75 million Series C fundraise led by Kora Capital, alongside global fintech Stripe, Alua Capital, Think Investments, and existing investors.
The funds will be used to accelerate Clear's expansion into B2B credit and payments plus expansion into international markets.
"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 digitization journey and we are fortunate to be in the perfect storm of electronic invoicing, GST, 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 the fuel for our international expansion," said Archit Gupta, founder, and chief executive officer, Clear.
Clear's SaaS platform has witnessed a phenomenal fivefold growth in the last 18 months adding over 3000 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 per cent of India's business invoices with a GMV of $400 billion.
"We are excited to partner with Clear as they innovate at scale in the Indian SaaS ecosystem, enabling Enterprises and 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," added Nitin Saigal, founder, and chief information officer, Kora.
Clear is widely known in India as the maker of ClearTax (a 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 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.
