Clear expands in GCC region, adds over 200 customers

Online taxation platform Clear (formerly known as ClearTax) is expanding in its presence in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region.

Clear, which launched its operations in Saudi Arabia in 2021, will now expand in the remaining five GCC countries, starting with United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Oman, Qatar and Kuwait, it said in a statement on Wednesday.

It has already added over 200 large enterprise customers to drive the expansion. Clear also plans to work with local solution providers in the area.

The growth into the region comes as GCC countries go through digital transformation. The Saudi Arabia government is launching various digital-first initiatives as a part of its Vision 2030. In Oman, e-invoicing mandate is expected to go live 2023 and Bahrain is expected to follow suit and launch by Jan 2024.

“As the scale of digitisation increases, businesses are meticulously following all the tax and compliance regulations mandated by the government and are looking for high-quality solutions, which are continuously updated with new regulations,” said Rohit Razdan, Chief Business Officer, Clear.

The fintech firm allows individuals to file income tax returns and build wealth through investment in mutual funds. Through its software-as-a-service (SaaS)-based offerings, it also helps small and large businesses and tax professionals with products and services such as invoicing, goods and services tax, income tax and TDS solutions, among others.

“We believe that Clear is well-positioned to launch cutting-edge products in such markets and play a meaningful role in helping businesses become compliant. Our new products can also help businesses embrace the changes, as they can be integrated with most accounting/ invoicing systems and ERPs (Enterprise resource planning),” he added.

Earlier this year, Clear raised undisclosed funding from global engineering veterans including Aparna Chennapragada, formerly with American stock trading platform Robinhood, Surojit Chatterjee of cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase, and Balaji Srinivasan, former General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz.

Last year in October, the company had raised $75 million as a part of its Series C fundraise led by Kora Capital. Stripe, Alua Capital, and Think Investments participated in that round. Mint had reported then that the company was valued around $700 million. Post the fundraise, Clear launched its operations in Saudi Arabia, investing the capital into localisation of the product suite, including Arabic language support, cloud infrastructure setup in the Kingdom, customisation and brand-building.

The company also acquired two companies this year– CimplyFive, a cloud-based financial solutions company, and Xpedize, a supply chain financing technology firm.

The company was founded in 2011 as a tax filing portal by Archit Gupta along with his father Raja Ram Gupta, Srivatsan Chari, and Ankit Solanki. It rebranded itself as “Clear“ last year in June to represent the wide spectrum of services it is offering, which expanded from tax filing to e-invoicing, invoice reconciliation, money management, vendor and distributor management.