Clear, formerly ClearTax, a provider of online taxes and finance software, announced on Wednesday that it has acquired supply chain financing technology business Xpedize.
This is Clear’s second acquisition, following the purchase of Ybanq, a B2B payments platform, in July. By the conclusion of FY’23, Clear hopes to double down on the collateral lending potential and reach $1 billion in total loan disbursement value.
Clear will provide Xpedize investors such as HDFC Capital and YourNest Venture Capital an exit as part of the agreement.
According to the corporation, it would absorb Xpedize’s 27 staff and rebrand the product as Clear Invoice Discounting.
Clear is focusing on invoice discounting as it prepares to expand internationally. Last October, it secured $75 million from Stripe, a US-based payments company, and others.
“We are one of the largest invoicing platforms in India, and invoice discounting is one of the cross-sell opportunities that we started building out. Hence, acquiring Xpedize made a lot of sense,” Archit Gupta, founder and chief executive of Clear, said.
The idea, according to Gupta, is to focus on providing financing to Clear’s 3,000 major enterprise customers’ dealers and distributors. The company will subsequently concentrate on offering loans to the 1.1 million small and medium businesses that utilise its platform for invoicing and other GST-related services.
Xpedize has a customer base of approximately 10,000 small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) to whom it provides invoice-based loans.
Close to ten banks and financial institutions are in talks with the company to give financing alternatives to its users. It also intends to expand its small and medium enterprise loan products, including dealer financing and direct lending. In the coming fiscal year, Clear hopes to expand its invoice discounting solution to 40,000 businesses and retailers.