[Funding alert] Fintech startup Clear raises $75M in Series C round

Fintech SaaS startup Clear, formerly known as ClearTax, has raised $75 million in Series C round of funding led by Kora Capital, Stripe, Alua Capital, Think Investments, and existing investors.

Clear said it will use the funding to accelerate its expansion into B2B credit and payment along with expansion into international markets. Archit Gupta, Founder & CEO, Clear, termed this capital infusion as “acceleration fuel”.

With this Series C round of funding, Clear has raised $140 million in equity since its inception with backing of investors such as Y Combinator, Composite Capital, Elevation Capital, Sequoia Capital, and Founders Fund. 

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According to the startup, its SaaS platform has recorded 5x growth in the last 18 months and added over 3,000 large enterprise customers along with surge in usage of more than one million small businesses.

On the overseas foray, Clear is first targeting the Middle East and Western Europe markets as it looks to extends its SaaS play. Later, it would be looking into Latin America and South-East-Asia.

On the funding received, Archit said,

“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 fuel for our international expansion.”

Clear platform caters to large enterprises, SMBs, and individuals. The product suite involves invoicing, GST, range of managed services & credit, I-T, TDS and wealth management solutions.

Nitin Saigal, Kora’s Founder and CIO, said:

“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.”

Clear aims to serve over 10,000 large enterprises and 10 million small businesses over the next couple of years. It recently acquired yBANQ and made the announcement in July this year marking its expansion into B2B payments. yBANQ helps businesses with payments collection, reconciliation, and automated bookkeeping.