The business currently known as Clear used to be known as Cleartax before. It started out in 2011 as a minimal, sleek and blazingly fast website to help Indians file taxes. Today, it does much more than just people’s taxes, even though its overwhelming market leadership means competitors are just “rounding errors,” according to Archit Gupta, the company’s co-founder and CEO.

Operating largely below the funding and valuation radars of 2020-2022, Clear has been quietly effecting a business model pivot under Archit’s leadership. Today, it is overwhelmingly a business-to-business focused company, not a business-to-consumer one. As India digitises and formalises its tax systems together, Clear has ridden both waves to help businesses and consumers stay compliant. But this transition hasn’t been quick or easy, as Archit candidly opens up about in our conversation. 

We talk about building a profitable and lasting company and why he turned from a “business-focused” to a “product-focused” CEO a year ago. We also go into how much of a cultural shift it took for Clear to start charging its customers to file taxes – and then, another significant shift: deciding to expand from India to Saudi Arabia. Archit also tells us how he spots excellent talent and much more in this episode.

Full Episode Transcript:

Archit Gupta   

Great question and great start. So where have I been wrong? More recently, we’ve been wrong lots of times. So I think that one’s easy. More recently was around, I would say monetizing the consumer business. Our Chief Business Officer, drove the company into monetizing the consumer business and the kind of price points that he was talking about. The rest of the company didn’t imagine. So over there… 

Rohin Dharmakumar   

To be be clear, you’re talking about asking those who filed taxes through clear tax for pay for it? 

Archit Gupta   

Yes, for the first time, we said that we will charge for it.  

Rohin Dharmakumar   

And you were saying you were wrong about it. And most of the company was wrong about it. You weren’t doing it.  

Archit Gupta   

I think the the pricing power we had and the monetization scope we had, that is what I was wrong about. I think we were very convinced in the core team that like we have to charge for it. Like we have to turn that business line profitable. And so that we can continue investing otherwise it would have been a sharp deep cut.  

Because running the business with no revenue was not an option for us anymore. 

Rohin Dharmakumar   

But I want to come back to this question later because I do have it for you.