Fintech software-as-a-service (SaaS) startup Clear (formerly known as ClearTax) has acquired company compliance automation platform CimplyFive for an undisclosed amount in an all cash-deal.
This is Clear’s second acquisition in March this year, after it acquired supply-chain financing company Xpedize for around Rs 100 crore, as it is doubling down on its software platform and diversifying services for its 4,000 enterprise customers.
With this acquisition, cimplyFive’s 20-member team, which also includes founder Shankar Jaganathan, will be onboarded by Clear.
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With this acquisition, it will allow US payments major Stripe-backed Clear to integrate compliance and governance management solutions into its existing finance cloud suite.
CimplyFive was founded in 2014 by Shankar Jaganathan, It helps company secretaries to automate compliance requirements of all the provisions of the Companies Act, 2013 and Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) Listing Obligations (LODR).
Its platform also provides companies with systems-based tracking, helping them stay up to date with regulation compliance.
The Bangalore-based Clear (formerly known as ClearTax) was founded in 2011 by Archit Gupta, Ankit Solanki, and Srivatsan Chari, It is a fintech platform that provides solutions for Income Tax Filing, GST and Mutual Fund investments.
“Serving the CFO’s office, we discovered that company secretaries are deeply under-served. These entities have to maintain multiple records, and in case of listed companies, they have to make LODR-related disclosures to SEBI, among others. These are happening in a broken system,” said, Archit Gupta, Founder and CEO of Clear.
Gupta also said that about 80 to 90 percent of Clear’s revenue was coming from business-to-business (B2B) offerings, which included enterprises, and small and medium business entities.
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“For the last two and half years, we have been doubling down on the enterprise business. There is better retention and the needs are larger,” Gupta added.
Online tax filing service provider, Clear plans to expand its geographic footprint to new countries in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region as well as the US and Europe. It also plans to build on its personal wealth management product over the years as the business vertical approaches EBITDA positivity.
Clear had acquired enterprise payments startup yBANQ in 2021 to enter the business-to-business (B2B) payments space.
In October 2021, Clear had raised $75 million in its Series C funding round from Kora Capital, Stripe, Alua Capital, and Think Investments.
About Cimplyfive
Founded in 2014, CimplyFive is the fruit of collaboration between five like-minded and ethically inspired professionals who are passionate about good corporate governance.
They believe that comprehensive compliance is at the core of good corporate governance. Further, good corporate governance starts from birth and it cannot be bolted on at a later date. For the experienced corporate professional, they seek to provide solutions that enable them to delegate their work knowing that there is a good risk management system in place to highlight potential exposures and offer mitigation paths thereby enhancing their personal effectiveness and efficiency.
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For the new entrepreneurs who face far more pressing business challenges, they ease their compliance load by fusing technology and domain specialization to provide a CLOUD hosted software solution.
About Clear
They are on a mission to simplify finances for Indians. They make software for invoices, taxes, payments and credit with a promise of saving money and time for millions of businesses, their supply chains, accountants and employees.
They have grown over years to now ‘see’ a material portion of India’s economic graph on their network. They process about 10% of India’s B2B invoices, which is over $300B of trade value every year.
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They contribute to 10% of India’s e-Invoice generation, and saved over ₹1,000 Cr for more than 400K businesses last year, roughly 2-7% of their tax outflow. Over 2,000 of India’s biggest brands and large corporations trust on them for their promises.
Over 80,000 tax experts use their platform every year. They handle over 10% of India’s income tax returns. Over 2M people come back to us every year to manage their taxes.
They help over 130M Indians demystify personal finances on thier website every year.
