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Tax-filing portal ClearTax is betting big on the roll-out of GST next year, which the company feels is a ₹5,000-crore opportunity.
The government hopes to rollout GST from April 1, 2017, after which, registration, filing of returns and claim of refund will be processed online.
The Bengaluru-based company, backed by Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma, had recently raised about $12 million from SAIF Partners. The firm has made some key hires in its leadership team to drive its new business vertical that will help about one crore small businesses and start-ups deal with the impending GST regime.
ClearTax has hired Dev Ramnane, former head of business development, SE Asia at InMobi, to head its B2B vertical that will have GST as a main source of revenue.
Archit Gupta, founder, ClearTax, told BusinessLine that the company has also hired some senior talent from companies such as Flipkart, Snapdeal and several Series B-funded start-ups to drive its B2B business. This business has tax-related software products such as ClearTDS and TaxCloud for CAs and enterprises to file their tax returns. The company plans to hire about 30 professionals, including CAs and programmers. Its total headcount at present is 75.
Opportunity “GST is a big opportunity. We have been working on this business division for the past three months, and it will not only help us boost our revenues, but also improve our margins. Going forward, B2B will be a big focus. We will help SMEs understand how GST will affect their day-to-day work,” Gupta said, and added that B2B is a high-value and high-margin business at 50-60 per cent.
At present, ClearTax gets about 65 per cent of its revenues from the existing B2B business (sale of software and services). The rest comes from the B2C tax-filing platform for individuals. It also helps stock brokers prepare and file their IT returns online.
ClearTax has over a million customers with about 20,000 businesses filing tax returns and claiming TDS refunds using its platform, Gupta said.
With the GST in place, Gupta feels the revenues from B2B will go up. ClearTax will act as an advisor to traders and businesses and help them in filing returns as they will be required to furnish a monthly return in the specified form (GSTR-3) under the new regime.
The firm competes with players such as Makeyourtax.com and Taxsmile.com.
Correction
A previous version of the article incorrectly referred to Dev Ramnane as former global head of sales at InMobi, whereas he was head of business development , SE Asia at InMobi.
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