Senior citizen Prasanna Ramamurthy was thrilled to file his income tax returns online without professional assistance, for the first time in his life. Overwhelmed by emotion, he wrote a letter thanking Archit Gupta, Founder CEO of Delhi-based, e-filing tax website ClearTax for empowering a senior citizen and also enclosed a cheque for ₹2,000 as a token of his gratitude, although ClearTax is free for senior citizens.

“It was a heart warming moment for our team. We framed Mr Ramamurthy’s letter and it occupies pride of place at a prominent space in our office, continuing to inspire us every day,” Gupta told BusinessLine . ClearTax is a product built by ClearSharp Technology Pvt Ltd, providing users a cloud-based intelligent e-filing platform that helps them file their tax returns in 15 minutes from start to finish by uploading Form 16. The vast majority of ClearTax users are from metros, fall in the age group of 25-34 years and are mostly from the IT and BFSI sectors.

Founded in 2011, ClearTax has processed tax return e-filings for 5,00,000 Indians in the assessment year 2014-15 and is on track to cross the one-million milestone by December 2015.

Shifts headquarters

To cater to strong demand for its services and fuel its next phase of growth in FY 2016, ClearTax shifted headquarters to Bengaluru last month. An investment of ₹20 crore has been earmarked to ramp up operations and hire 100 people, over the next 12 months. “The best applicants to our jobs were from Bengaluru. So, I decided to relocate to the IT city along with 26 other team members. However, 17 chartered accountants on our team continue to be based in Delhi. Majority of our new hires will be in Engineering and Design (UX and UI),” said Gupta.

ClearTax claims to be the only cloud-based platform that supports all ITRs that exist in the country, including 1, 2A, 2, 3, 4, 4S, 5 and 6. Users can either file tax returns themselves at a charge of ₹300 or enlist the services of one of the 100 chartered accountants on ClearTax to do it for them for charges ranging from ₹600 to ₹13,000.

“We are focused on achieving a target of 10 million Indians filing income tax returns on ClearTax in the next 24 months.” The website is free for women, senior citizens and for Army, Navy and Air Force personnel. Thirty four million Indians filed income tax returns last year. This year 40 million Indians are expected to file returns by March 2016.

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