winners Best in Fin Tech
Financial Services
Clearsharp Technologies’ ClearTax
A cloud based platform that utilizes technology to help both businesses and individuals
in calculating and filing their tax returns. Premium users can also avail services of CAs
to take care of their legal obligations
C
learTax was conceptualized
to ease the tax returns related
issues in India. Most individuals
face problems while filing ITR or TDS
returns as there is no authentic source
available online which could guide
them. There are various platforms
which educate about the tax returns
and the filing process, but this
platform has been developed to not
only provide right suggestions but
to also help in filing ITR, TDS returns,
etc. and also provide expert advice
in fulfilling regulatory compliance.
The company was found in 2011 and
in 2014 they were incubated at Y
Combinator.
To use their services, users can
simply log-in to the portal or mobile
app and provide the basic details. Next
you need to upload your form 16 and
the system shall automatically prepare
your income tax return.
Challenges faced in running
the platform
The startup has to maintain correct-
ness in tax returns to enable users to
file complicated tax returns with mul-
tiple incomes and deduction sources.
The platform contains software that
is a logical replica of current income
tax laws. Modelling that in a simple
way has been a key challenge for the
28 PCQuest J U L Y 2 0 1 6
- Ashok Pandey
startup. As far as the user interface is
concerned, it is challenging to explain
the relevant calculations and tax terms
to a user in a such a simple manner
that he is not overwhelmed by the
entire process.
Technologies Used
ClearTax is using ReactJS for all the
new products, it helps model stateful
user interfaces in a beautiful way. As
they are in the finance sector, they
can’t afford even a single mistake, and
here ReactJS helps them thoroughly
to test the user interface. For the back- Archit Gupta
end process, the company is using CEO & Founder
clojure, which enables them to write
clear, straightforward functional code
that can easily be tested.
about the compnay
How they’ve progressed so far Year of inception:
With 1.5 million users. currently this 2011
company is one of India’s popular tax
filing platform. Recently they have Product/service offered:
• ClearTax - Income tax return efiling
introduced their mobile app which
• ClearTDS - File TDS returns and generate
has got more than 25,000 downloads
Form 16
in a short period of time. ClearTax • TaxCloud - Designed for Chartered
is being used across the nation and Accountant firms to file tax returns and
about 70% of the business growth is TDS returns
through word of mouth and organic
Target customers:
channels, without too much market-
Individuals and CAs
ing initiatives. A measure of its popu-
larity can be judged by their high Reach/No. of users:
Net Promoter Scores (NPS), which 1 Million customers and 20,000 CAs
and SMBs
means it is one of the highly referred
platforms on social media.
They are targeting to reach 3
Million users on the platform. They
also expect to reach a count of 50,000
CAs/SMBs using their services by the
end of FY 16-17. They are also working
on the rollout of a Tax Savings Platform
– ClearSave to ease ITR filing for
business professionals.
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