Clear expansion in GCC area, added more than 200 customers

Clear, which began its operations in Saudi Arabia in 2021, will now expand to the remaining five GCC countries starting with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Oman, Qatar and Kuwait, it said in a statement on Wednesday.

It has already added over 200 large enterprise customers to drive expansion. Clear also plans to work with local solution providers in the region.

Growth in this area comes as GCC countries undergo a digital transformation. The Saudi Arabian government is launching various digital-first initiatives as a part of its Vision 2030. In Oman, the e-invoicing mandate is expected to go live by 2023 and Bahrain is expected to follow suit and launch by January 2024.

Rohit Razdan, Chief Business Officer, Clear, said, “As the scale of digitization increases, businesses are carefully adhering to all tax and compliance regulations mandated by the government and are looking for high-quality solutions, which constantly keep pace with the new regulations. are updated.”

Fintech firms allow individuals to file income tax returns and build wealth through investments in mutual funds. Through its Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)-based offerings, it helps small and large businesses and tax professionals with products and services such as invoicing, goods and services tax, income tax and TDS solutions.

“We believe Clear is well positioned to launch cutting-edge products in such markets and plays a meaningful role in helping businesses become compliant. Our new products can also help businesses adapt to the changes , as they can be integrated with most accounting/invoicing systems and ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning).”

Earlier this year, Clear raised undisclosed funding from global engineering giants including Aparna Chennapragada, formerly of US stock trading platform Robinhood, Surojit Chatterjee of cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase and Balaji Srinivasan, former general partner of Andreessen Horowitz.

In October last year, the company raised $75 million as a part of its Series C fundraise led by Quora Capital. Stripe, Alua Capital and Think Investments participated in that round. Mint then reported that the company was valued at around $700 million. Following the fundraising, Clear began its operations in Saudi Arabia, investing capital in the localization of the product suite, which includes Arabic language support, cloud infrastructure setup in the Kingdom, customization and brand-building.

The company also acquired two companies this year—CimplyFive, a cloud-based financial solutions company, and Xpedize, a supply chain financing technology firm.

The company was founded in 2011 by Archit Gupta along with his father Raja Ram Gupta, Shreevatsan Chari and Ankit Solanki as a tax filing portal. It rebranded itself as “Clear” in June last year to represent the broad spectrum of services it offers, from tax filing to e-invoicing, invoice reconciliation, wealth management, vendor and distributor management expanded.