Clear buys Xpedize
ACQUISITIONS INVESTMENT STARTUP 

Clear buys Xpedize and expands its supply chain finance capabilities

Administrator

ClearTax, a provider of online taxes and finance software, announced on Wednesday that Clear buys Xpedize, a supply chain financing technology business.

People familiar with the situation had informed Economic Times (ET) that the deal is worth Rs 100 crore.

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. ET announced on February 28 that it has set a target of $3 billion in merchant-loan disbursements by FY24.

“We’re one of India’s leading invoicing systems, and invoice discounting is one of the cross-sell opportunities we’ve been working on.” As a result, acquiring Xpedize made a lot of sense,” Archit Gupta, Clear’s founder, and CEO told ET.

Clear’s 3,000 large enterprise customers, according to Gupta, would be the focus of the company’s funding efforts. The company will next concentrate on providing financing options to the 1.1 million small and medium businesses that rely on its platform for invoicing and other GST-related services.

Xpedize has a customer base of over 10,000 SMEs to whom it provides invoice-based financing.

Close to ten banks and financial institutions have expressed interest in partnering with the company to provide financing options for its users. It also intends to expand its small and medium enterprise lending options, including dealer financing and direct loans. In the coming fiscal year, Clear also plans to expand its invoice discounting service to 40,000 businesses and merchants.