India's ClearTax Raises $12 Million To Expand Into New Services

ClearTax, an online tax service company, raised $12 million in its latest round of financing, just one month after closing a $2 million seed round following an initial $1.3 million raise, according to TechCrunch.

"It was not visible for us whether we could do a Series A so quickly," ClearTax CEO and founder Archit Gupta told in an interview to TechCrunch. "2016 has been a year that is slow so we expected it to be more difficult."

The report says Bengaluru-based ClearTax counts Founders Fund, Sequoia and notable angels like PayPal founder Max Levchin, early WhatsApp exec Neeraj Arora and AngelList's Naval Ravikant among its backers. This new round was provided in its entirety by SAIF Partners. Gupta said that was down to the chemistry he found in SAIF's Ravi Adusumalli.

The money is likely to last some time and will be used to help grow the ClearTax user base and expand its reach into new financial products.

"Even with 4x our current headcount, we won't need more capital for three to four more years," Gupta told us, adding that he anticipates that ClearTax can break even within the next two years. "We bootstrapped for three and a half years, we understand the value of money a lot."

TechCrunch reported that ClearTax is also developing three new financial products to expand its reach.

First is a tax return service for businesses, which is focused around the Indian government move to evolve the country's outdated and inconsistent VAT regulations to a more standardized GST system. The second is a business tax system for SMEs and independent contractors, which has been in beta for some time.

Finally, the company is building out a tax savings product. Since it already has a user's tax and salary data, it would help them invest in India's top 20 funds based on their financial situation.