Clear (formerly ClearTax)

Clear, formerly ClearTax, is an Indian compliance and finance software company founded in 2011 in Bengaluru by Archit Gupta, Srivatsan Chari and Ankit Solanki. It is an Invoice Registration Portal provider approved by GST Network, so invoices filed through it are validated against the tax authority itself. That government validated invoice trail is the evidence Indian banks and NBFCs use to lend against an SME’s receivables.

The platform is organised as Clear Compliance Cloud (GST filing, e-invoicing, e-way bill, TDS returns and MaxITC input tax credit matching), Clear Finance Cloud (accounts payable automation and vendor management) and Clear Supply Chain Cloud, which carries invoice discounting. In discounting, a large buyer funds early payment of its suppliers’ invoices from treasury cash, unused bank limits, banks and NBFCs, or the TReDS marketplace, with vendors bidding a discount rate at individual invoice level. The discounting platform reports 50+ large enterprises, 36,100+ vendors, 306 million invoices and USD 5.8 billion of invoice value. Clear serves 4,000+ enterprise clients, integrates with SAP, Oracle and NetSuite, and is ISO 27001 certified.

1. Approved IRP: e-invoicing registered directly with GST Network, producing a tax authority validated invoice record.

2. Invoice discounting: vendors bid a discount rate per invoice; funding comes from buyer treasury, bank limits, banks and NBFCs, or TReDS.

3. GST filing suite: GSTR-1 to GSTR-9 preparation, e-way bill and TDS returns on one ledger.

4. MaxITC: automated matching of purchase invoices against supplier filings to recover input tax credit.

5. Accounts payable and vendor management with bi-directional ERP integration to SAP, Oracle and NetSuite.

6. Verified scale: 306 million invoices and USD 5.8 billion invoice value on the discounting platform; 4,000+ enterprise clients; ISO 27001.