Income tax solutions and much more, what ClearTax does, CEO Archit Gupta explains

Launched in 2011, ClearTax is a pioneer in the fintech-powered taxation and compliance sector. The start-up has witnessed a rapid growth in the number of taxpayers driven by two primary factors: demonetization and implementation of goods and services tax (GST). In fact, the personal income tax related services segment, which is a business to consumer (B2C)-focused offering, has recorded almost a 100% growth year on year. Archit Gupta, co-founder and chief executive officer, ClearTax, tells Ashish K Tiwari about the overall business and more.

Last few months must have been busy time at your firm ..

Both our business to business (B2B) and business to consumer (B2C) sides of the business are keeping us busy. This is the first tax assessment year after the implementation of GST. We’d built a new vertical last year to offer enterprises simplified solutions to file GST returns. Our income tax filing platform is looking to process nearly 4 million tax returns (40 lakh) this year, which is the highest for any platform in the country. On the other hand, we have delivered our GST solutions to over 40,000 companies, including large enterprises such as Puma, Hardcastle Petrofer, Lenskart, Inox AP and Epson among others. In the online space PhonePe, Myntra and Jabong are using our platform. We are looking to reach 1 lakh businesses in the coming years.

What is driving these businesses to use the ClearTax platform?

The ClearTax GST software helps enterprises manage their SAP, Oracle and Tally interfaces. Also, the ClearTax interface is integrated with the government portal to provide enterprises with comprehensive change management and tax filing assistance. It’s not efficient for businesses to do it by themselves, especially on an enterprise-scale. ClearTax is providing a specialised software which understands the GST law and is updated with all the recent developments in terms of compliance regulations. Our software uses intelligent algorithms that employ machine learning to match invoices to relevant entries and corporate customers reported an increase in data matching by 60% after using our software. Enterprises can also share the software with suppliers, vendors and distributors and ensure GST compliance of the entire supply chain.

Isn’t Tally a significant player in this area?

Tally operates in the small business space and ClearTax targets its solution to large businesses and their end-to-end requirements. We offer them the option to integrate our interface with that of any solution ERP, including Tally. Besides this, we also have our own Tally Connector. Clients can install the ClearTax Tally connector in Tally and use the software. It really doesn’t matter what software you’re using for accounting or bookkeeping, we can help businesses integrate multiple interfaces. We have recently launched the E-Way Bill solution, where businesses can generate an e-way bill on goods being moved across different locations.

Do you plan to get listed say three to five years from now?

A listing should be possible for us easily. We would prefer to get listed on an international exchange than an Indian exchange because a tech company gets valued differently in international exchanges as compared to Indian ones.

Given the volumes, you must be profitable?

No, not yet. We are investing ahead of the curve now and we spend a lot—45%— of our revenues on R&D and technology.