India’s Stripe-Backed Clear Nets $75M to Expand into Online Payments

Clear, the startup from India, has raised $75 million from investors, including from Stripe and others, as it attempts to get into more online payments, a report from Bloomberg says.

Clear’s services offer cloud software subscription services for tax filings.

In addition, it also works with wealth management, services tax filing and electronic invoicing services.

The investors have been funding more and more as the industry has been seeing more growth.

Clear’s platform has grown five times in the last year and a half, adding 3,000 large enterprises as well as over a million small businesses.

The new round was led by Kora Capital, with Alua Capital joining in, alongside Think Investments and others that have traditionally backed Clear.

Per Bloomberg, Clear says it now has over a tenth of India’s business invoicing to process.

It recently bought yBANQ as a way to get more into payments, the report says.

The acquisition of yBANQ was reported by PYMNTS as “a logical next step for us to provide enterprise payment collection infrastructure for our clients and offer pay out facilities as well,” according to Archit Gupta, founder and CEO of Clear.

Gupta, speaking with the Economic Times, said the acquisition had been made for the company’s team.

Read more: B2B Payments Startup yBANQ Acquired By India’s Clear

The report notes that yBANQ works on digitized bookkeeping, reconciliation and payments collection offerings, and its workforce is 14 people that have worked in the past for FinTechs including PayU and Citrus Payments.

In other India-based news, digital business banking startup Open has raised $100 million in a funding round which estimates its valuation at around $500 million.

See also: SMB Digital Banking Startup Open Closes $100M Funding At $500M Valuation

Open has reportedly added 90,000 new small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) every month, and the company is now looking to expand to other areas like Southeast Asia, Europe and the U.S.

With the new funding, Open plans to boost its workforce by 800 people, adding new employees for product, business and technology.