Last year, 3.4 crore Indians filed income tax returns online, of which 3 per cent used the ClearTax platform to file their tax returns.
Founded in 2011, fin-tech start-up ClearTax processed income tax return e-filings for 5,00,000 Indians in assessment year 2014-15 and by the end of December crossed the 1 million milestone. And, all this was done with zero marketing spend.
ClearTax is a product built from scratch by ClearSharp Technology Pvt Ltd, providing users a cloud-based, intelligent e-filing platform that helps them file their tax returns, by uploading Form 16, in 12 minutes from start to finish.
“We have impacted the lives of 3 per cent of all tax payers in India. This makes us the top fin-tech start-up in the country with massive impact, trust and happiness among our users, who have come to our platform via word of mouth. We now have a base of 1 million customers, 10,000 CA firms, and relationships with 220 corporates” Archit Gupta, founder-CEO, ClearTax, told
The vast majority of ClearTax users are from metro cities, fall in the age group of 25 to 34 years, and are mostly from the IT and BFSI sectors. Users can file tax returns either themselves — for a charge of ₹300 — or enlist the services of one of the 100 chartered accountants on ClearTax, for charges ranging from ₹600 to ₹13,000. The website is free for women, senior citizens and armed forces personnel.
The start-up recently partnered with the Union Bank of India to offer free e-filing services to the bank’s employees and customers, while other tax-related services were made available at discounted prices. The Union Bank has approximately 16,000 employees and 4 crore customers who will benefit from this partnership.
Hiring & expansion ClearTax was bootstrapped for the first three years and shifted base from Delhi to Bengaluru last July to fuel its next phase of growth by attracting the country’s best talent. The start-up is on a hiring spree to ramp up its 55-strong team by an additional 150 — of which 100 will be hired in sales, business and operations roles and the rest for the engineering team.