Archit Gupta took the slow and steady route in helping people self-file taxes. In seven years, ClearTax has grownboth in scale and scope.
Ten minutes was what Archit Gupta thought he had. Six minutes was what he got. At the end of that meeting in the summer of 2014, at Y Combinator’s office in Mountain View, California, an otherwise sanguine and stoic Gupta was somewhat baffled.
Because for about an hour before his turn, Gupta had seen half a dozen potential candidates consume their quota of 10 minutes before Paul Graham, Trevor Blackwell and Robert Morris, co-founders of the Silicon Valley startup accelerator. For some, the interview even stretched a little beyond the stipulated time.
Having been ejected out of the chamber in half the time, Gupta was almost convinced that his startup ClearTax—the firm had enabled about 1 lakh income tax returns (ITR) filings the year before—had not made the cut. After all, a stint at Y Combinator, which has been the breeding ground for Airbnb, Dropbox, Stripe, Quora, Instacart, Zenefits, Reddit and Coinbase, would have done a world of good for his fledgling venture.
But dejection gave way to euphoria when Graham called later in the day to say that ClearTax had been shortlisted to become a part of Y Combinator’s batch of 2014. For Gupta, Ankit Solanki and Srivatsan Chari, the other co-founders of ClearTax who had accompanied Gupta to the interview, it was a long night at one of the local Irish pubs.
ClearTax was the first Indian startup to be selected by the accelerator; it was also the first homegrown firm to be backed by AngelList Founder Naval Ravikant, PayPal Co-founder Max Levchin and the Founders Fund, a venture capital fund floated by another PayPal co-founder, Peter Thiel.
“Our product was imagined differently from anything available in India. We made the process extremely simple. When you come to a platform, you should think it is hospitable, that it is treating you well,” says Gupta, 33.
Esta historia es de la edición October 12, 2018 de Forbes India.
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Esta historia es de la edición October 12, 2018 de Forbes India.
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