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Fintech start-up ClearTax, which provides income-tax e-filing and compliance solutions, has roped in senior executives from Amazon, Adobe and Microsoft to strengthen its top management deck.
ClearTax, which is among 32 of India’s 3,500 fintech start-ups that are potential unicorns, according to start-up tracking and intelligence platform Tracxn, says it will grow its revenue and user base by 3X this year on the back of the recent top management hires.
Vishal Dubey, who has 21 plus years of experience in Telecom, Internet and Media sectors, has been onboarded as Executive Vice-President for Family Business (MSME). He will be responsible for developing dedicated products for MSMEs and primarily focus on GST solutions. Previously, Dubey-led India business for Amazon Fuse and Mobile Business Development, where he was responsible for building strategic partnerships with telcos and smartphone companies to acquire e-commerce and Prime customers for Amazon.
“The Indian government continues to push aggressively for formalisation, digitisation of data, digitisation of payments and tax revenues via income-tax and GST for the 60 million MSMEs in India. These MSMEs will need tech and access to automated financial solutions. In alignment with our mission to simplify financial lives of these businesses, we have hired Vishal Dubey from Amazon to lead our high-growth vertical of Micro, Small and Medium businesses” Archit Gupta, founder and CEO, ClearTax, told BusinessLine.
Akshay Bharadwaj has been onboarded as Senior V-P and Head of Consumer Business, which comprises ClearTax’s income- tax e-filing and mutual fund investment platform businesses. He comes with over 15 years of experience. Bharadwaj moved to ClearTax from Adobe Systems where he was founder and general manager of Adobe KnowHow, managing revenue, user growth, product, marketing and business relationships with partners and distribution channels for its worldwide business.
Sriram Santhanam has been hired as Senior VP – Enterprise Business, from Microsoft where he was Territory Sales Manager. He comes with 20 plus years of experience in B2B sales cutting across Telecom, Software and Hardware segments and has worked with Airtel, Tata Communications and Nokia, managing large conglomerates to MSMEs.
“ClearTax is experiencing a rapid growth trajectory. With Vishal, Akshay and Sriram onboard, we now have eight executives in our top management deck. We will grow our user base and revenues 3X on the back of our new hires” said Gupta, who plans to double the start-up’s 130 strong product and engineering team in the next 12 months. Last year, 2.1 million consumers filed their income tax returns on ClearTax, up from 1.5 million consumers in 2017.
Founded by three friends, Archit Gupta, Srivatsan Chari and Ankit Solanki, ClearTax became the first Y-Combinator funded company of India in 2014. The Bengaluru-based start-up has raised $68 million in funding since its inception in 2011 and counts Composite Capital, SAIF Partners and Sequoia Capital among its investors.
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