Stripe, Kora lead investors in Clear’s $75-million funding round

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Software as a Service (SaaS) firm Clear – previously known as ClearTax – has raised $75 million in its Series C round of funding, led by Kora Capital, along with Stripe, Alua Capital, Think Investments, and a clutch of existing investors. It will use the money to expand into B2B credit and payments, apart from expansion into international markets.

This is also Stripe's second big investment in India's booming fintech space, days after it acquired Bengaluru-based Recko, a startup that offers payments reconciliation software for internet businesses.

Clear offers products that allow individual users, tax professionals, small, medium, and large businesses to file returns, GST, income tax, and credit. It also offers individuals wealth management solutions. It said its platform has seen a five-fold growth in the last 18 months, adding over 3,000 larger enterprise customers. It also saw a surge in usage with over one million small businesses on the platform. The Clear platform now processes over 10 percent of India’s business invoices with a GMV (gross merchandise value) of $400 billion.

With this round, Clear, founded in 2011 by IIT Guwahati alumnus Archit Gupta, has now raised $140 million in equity capital since its inception. Its other investors include Y Combinator, Composite Capital, Elevation Capital, Sequoia Capital, and Founders Fund.

"Kora has a 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, 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, Clear’s Founder and CEO.