Listen: ClearTax CEO Archit Gupta has acquisitions on his radar amidst cost cuts to survive the pandemic

Sequoia Capital and SAIF Partners backed tax filing and investment platform ClearTax remains bullish about acquisition targets in payments, invoicing, data sciences, and others despite the economic slowdown brought about due to the Covid-19 pandemic. 

“We continue to engage with companies (acquisition targets) and founders and if we need to raise funds opportunistically, we will do that,” Archit Gupta, CEO of ClearTax said in the latest episode of TechCircle Dialogues.

The Mumbai-based company acquired Karvy’s GST filing business in March. Prior to that, it acquired audio platform Dose FM to build mobile products for MSMEs.

ClearTax last raised $54.2 million from Hong Kong based Composite Capital in October 2018. Sequoia and SAIF are among early investors in the company.

While the company is well capitalized for now, it has also brought in capital conservation measures keeping in view the slowdown, Gupta said. 

The company has managed to renegotiate contracts with suppliers and software partners, focusing on non-people costs. “Other than our Bengaluru headquarters, we have exited office spaces in other cities. By end of the year we expect 50% of the team to work remotely,” he said. 

While the company works with a large number of micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs), the bulk of its revenues come from enterprise clients such as Titan and Raymond. In the current scenario when MSMEs have been hit hard due to the national lockdown related to Covid-19, the company has also accelerated the roll out of its products targeted at MSMEs, including extending credit. 

The company offers tax filing, tax cloud, TDS returns, GST, mutual fund investments and chartered accountant and legal services to individuals, MSMEs and enterprises. It works with 60,000 chartered accountants and tax professionals and claims to serve over 1000 large enterprises through its GST software.