June 17, 2016: ClearTax, an income tax returns e-filing website, has raised $12 million (about Rs 80 crore) in Series-A investment round. The funding round, was led by Ravi Adusumalli of SAIF Partners who will also be joining the company’s board.
As a part of the deal, Ravi Adusumalli, managing partner at SAIF, has joined the board of ClearTax’s Delaware, USA-based entity ‘Software is Correct’.
Five year-old company Defmacro Software, which owns and operates ClearTax, will use the proceeds from the round to launch a slew of consumer-focused tax-saving products, including mutual funds and other equity-linked saving schemes, its cofounder Archit Gupta said.
“A typical agent is very bias. To solve for this, our products will be data driven, and completely transparent, to the extent that we will publish our commissions on the site itself,” said Gupta who is also the CEO of the firm.
Adusumalli said, “We are very excited to partner with Archit and team as they translate their market leadership in tax filing space to become one of the largest fintech platforms in India.”
This move into online investment advisory will pitch it against startups like FundsIndia, backed by Inventus Capital and Faering Capital, and Aditya Birla Group’s MyUniverse in which World Bank’s investment arm IFC owns a stake.
Gupta founded ClearTax along with his chartered accountant father Raja Ram Gupta, Srivatsan Chari and Ankit Solanki.
