Durba Ghosh Moneycontrol News
Online tax filing portal ClearTax is expanding its ambit of products and has launched a pilot project to launch investment assistance under 80C tax saving scheme.
“We have seen a very good traction with GST. We already have over 200,000 users for it on our platform. Now we will look at adding more products. The plan to introduce an investment feature is under the works now,” founder and CEO of ClearTax, Archit Gupta told Moneycontrol.
The project is piloting with 1,000 users and is expected to be introduced by end of the year or next year. The product will also have an option for users to invest directly through the portal in mutual funds under Equity Linked Savings Scheme (ELSS) or book a Systematic Investment Plan (SIP).
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“We will be brand agnostic. We are not looking at pushing any product to the user. We want to help them make the right decision. If they want to know about any other investment instrument we will assist them,” Gupta added.
Down the line, the company will also create assessment tools to judge creditworthiness and risk appetite of the user.
ClearTax started its operations in 2011 with the launch of an online income tax-filing product, and has gradually expanded its portfolio with offering tax planning, rent receipt generator, ClearSave that helps users with the useful literature on tax-saving investments.
Last month, ClearTax launched a cloud-based software for traders - GST Pro and GST Biz – for small business, and enterprises to be GST-ready. The company had committed USD 5 million to grow its GST business, and to educate the community. ClearTax has several free-to-view videos and blogs to help sellers and traders understand the GST concept. This is separate from the GST course offered by ClearTax that helps educate professionals such as CAs and tax consultants.
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In the enterprise GST segment, ClearTax has announced tie-ups with companies such as Amazon, Voonik, NoBroker, and Paytm, among 10 others in e-commerce and internet space.
To support its GST operations, ClearTax is expanding its team across product, technology, finance and marketing teams.
“Complete GST compliance will take time; about a year. September is the extended deadline for filing, so our platform is free of cost till then. To support a large number of queries and filings, we are expanding the team,” Gupta said.
Currently, about 1 million tax returns are filed on ClearTax every year. Gupta expects that to grow to 2 million on the back of GST. The company also expects to grow its revenues by over 20 percent monthly to be profitable by 2019.
ClearTax charges a monthly or an annual subscription fee for its software. The fee ranges between Rs 5,000 to Rs 1,500,000 per depending on the type of service. The GST product, which is currently offered free of cost, will attract charges of anywhere between Rs 100 per month (for SME product) up to Rs 100,000 (for enterprises).
“Adding more products will further improve the revenue per user for us,” Gupta added.
The company plans to use the USD 12 million funding it received last year in 2016 from SAIF Partners, for expansion. The company’s other investors include American seed accelerator Y Combinator, Sequoia Capital, and PayPal Co-founder Max Levchin.
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