After Saudi Arabia, Bengaluru headquartered software-as-a-service (SaaS) firm Clear is rapidly expanding to the rest of the five GCC countries starting with UAE, Bahrain, Oman, Qatar and Kuwait.
The firm has onboarded over 200 large enterprise customers to drive this expansion in the Middle East. Clear started its operations in Saudi Arabia, following its $75 million fundraise last year, by launching invoicing and taxation products for medium to large enterprises.
The cloud-based e-invoicing product has a scalability of millions of transactions per day, 99.9 per cent uptime and API infrastructure-based connectivity to multiple billing platforms and ERPs.
The fintech firm directed a significant amount of its investment to localisation of the product suite, including Arabic language support, cloud infrastructure setup inside Saudi Arabia and customisation of the product as per local business needs. The company has also invested heavily in brand-building.
Similar to India, Clear is working very closely with government bodies like ZATCA (Tax authority of Saudi Arabia) to launch products for the enterprise needs, including VAT compliance, accounts payables and receivables, automation and B2B payments in the next few quarters.
Many Indian companies with presence in Saudi Arabia have started adopting Clear’s solution. It is now in the process of launching a series of digital and cloud-based solutions in the rest of the GCC countries in the next few quarters.
While Oman has announced its e-invoicing mandate to go live in the second half of 2023, Bahrain is expected to launch it by January 2024. Clear will launch its e-invoicing solutions in these countries in the coming months.
Sharing his insights on Clear’s GCC expansion, Rohit Razdan, Chief Business Officer of Clear, said, “GCC countries are launching a range of digital-first initiatives as part of their “digital economy” vision.
“As the scale of digitisation increases, businesses are meticulously following all the tax and compliance regulations mandated by the government and showing a high willingness to comply with the evolving regulations. However, most of them are looking for high-quality solutions which are continuously updated with new regulations. We believe that Clear is well-positioned to launch cutting-edge products in such markets and play a meaningful role in helping businesses become compliant.”
The GCC region currently has nearly 20 lakh VAT-registered businesses looking to adopt such digital initiatives. Normally, large enterprises from this region are registered under one group VAT number but may have various business lines operating under one group company.
For such mid to large-sized enterprises with complex business processes, multiple different systems and an appreciation for sophisticated new edge products, Clear envisions building a B2B Business Network that helps them streamline taxation, compliance, procurement, invoicing, payments, and collections.