This Legal-Tech Startup Is Changing The Way Indians Hire Lawyers

Problems are part and parcel of human life. While some problems we are able to solve ourselves, some require us to seek legal help. Unfortunately, the Indian legal system is something which majority of Indians consider a not so friendly department and often abstain from approaching them until and unless the situation is really grim. Changing this perspective prevalent in the Indian society about law and lawyers and making contacting legal advisors a task as easy as calling your best friend in times of troubles, is a New Delhi based legal-tech startup LawRato.

What is LawRato?

In simple words, LawRato can be described as a legal tech platform providing expert legal advice and counseling to the common man. Using the platforms, anyone and everyone can get expert legal advice within a few minutes time, or even book a private consultation with a lawyer, through meeting, email or phone. In addition to all this, the platform even has a legal answers knowledge bank and law guidelines to give the legally confused minds immediate answers during troubled times.

Currently, the startup has 1500 legal partners across more than 120 cities and is helping over 300 users on a daily basis to get legal advice.

How was LawRato conceived?

The startup was born after a keen observation of the founders regarding how the common man found it extremely difficult to get the right legal advice, or often went ahead with the wrong lawyer as they could not rightfully evaluate the skills required according to their needs.

The startup founded in early 2015, was amongst the were very first players in the market as most of its legal services cater to the B2B segment.

What makes LawRato different from its counterparts?

Picking on the users desirability of always wanting the best of the best, LawRato has its own verified network of legal partners. Unlike other legal directories, they actually know each and every lawyer on their platform as they do the lawyer verification and background authentication of the lawyers themselves. Further, the startup also has its in-house case-managers, who are non-practicing lawyers, always available for helping the user to connect to the right lawyer according to their needs.

What problems is the startup catering to ?

Since not every lawyer is an expert in every practice area, LawRato's mission is to make it simpler for users to find the right lawyer near them, based on practice area, experience, rating, location and availability.

A bit about the founders

The startup has been conceived by two doers- Rohan Mahajan and Nikhil Sarup.

Rohan is a law graduate from CLC – Delhi, who chose to pursue marketing, and has over 14 years of experience in operations management, and lead-generation programs across South-East Asia. His last job was with WizCraft , where he headed their BTL operations.

Nikhil, on the other hand, is a software engineer who has spent 16 years in the digital marketing space. He has helped build and implement enterprise IT solutions, and managed digital initiatives for many top MNCs across paid, owned and earned media. His last job was with Razorfish India, as Chief Strategy Officer.

Funding Details

In addition to the initial funds invested by the two founders, LawRato has raised 100,000 USD from a group of angel investors in 2015.

Future Plans

The startup which already has 1500 legal partners across more than 120 cities and is helping over 300 users on a daily basis to get legal advice, is working hard to strengthen its presence across India. LawRato is also in the midst of building its online Do-it-Yourself tools to help users understand their legal situation and options better. Further, in order to make its services reach more and more people, the startup is also working on its mobile app featuring an interactive help AI (Artificial Intelligence).

[Top Image - Shutterstock]

Legal Raasta Raises $1M in Angel Funding from HNIs

Founded in June 2015 by Himanshu Jain and Pulkit Jain, Legal Raasta Technologies Pvt Ltd, which provides legal services to entrepreneurs, SMEs and professionals over its online platform Legalraasta.com, has raised $1 million in angel funding. The round was led by two HNIs - Praveen Khandelwal and Yatin Kumar.

The raised funding will be used by the startup to expand its team  & operations (set up full service offices in metropolitan cities), technology improvement and to add more services including legal documentation and licenses. The company is also planning to launch 2 new products including: LegalRaahi.com (marketplace for CA, CS & Lawyers) and Taxraahi.com (online return filing portal for ITR and TDS returns).

LegalRaasta.com helps customers with registrations, licenses and tax filing done via simple and trouble free DIY forms. Currently it provide 50+ services (e.g company incorporation, food license registration, import export code, service tax registration and trademark filing). The startup charges the customer a nominal fee for processing their work and submission of documents with government departments. Customers make payment online and get status updates via its CRM system.

Legal services and compliance market has been pegged at over Rs. 20,000 crore, growing at rate of 25% p.a. Of this, only 3% has been penetrated by the existing online players. The market conditions at present are most conducive to growth of online legal services. Customers are under-served with need for economical, reliable and fast legal services.

LegalRaasta plans to make a dent through better technology and operations. It target 2-4% share of this 20,000 crore market over the next 3 years.

The company's target audience include entrepreneurs, SMEs and professionals. It offer them standardized professional services at approx 50% cost saving. The startup offers services in more than 30 cities across India.

Commenting on their differentiation factors, Himanshu said, "Existing players in the market are a typical lead-based companies, with manual processes for collecting customer information, document submission etc. LegalRaasta.com is a completely tech-based platform which collects information via simplified DIY forms – this information is automatically fed to required government forms/ departments, saving 40% time & 45% cost. Our DIY forms are dynamic and adapts to customer inputs (e.g, subsequent questions changes automatically based on customer inputs such as customer city, no of directors etc). Customers get automated SMSs, emails, and reminders at each stage of the customer lifecycle. They can check their work progress through live customer work tracker."

The startup consists of 25 members in its team, 2200 customers, 11000 daily enquiries and its revenue growing 40% per month.

Going forward, its vision is to develop a fully integrated cloud-enabled platform for hassle-free and reliable legal and financial services. In the year ahead, the startup will focus on improving LegalRaasta.com and expanding sales. The company will setup full service offices in 6+ cities. In parallel, it have planned multiple other products to simply legal and government compliance for its target customer segment.

Check out the below video to know more about Legal Raasta:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NSIg1XT-KM0]

Legal Raasta Raises $1M in Angel Funding from HNIs

Founded in June 2015 by Himanshu Jain and Pulkit Jain, Legal Raasta Technologies Pvt Ltd, which provides legal services to entrepreneurs, SMEs and professionals over its online platform Legalraasta.com, has raised $1 million in angel funding. The round was led by two HNIs - Praveen Khandelwal and Yatin Kumar.

The raised funding will be used by the startup to expand its team  & operations (set up full service offices in metropolitan cities), technology improvement and to add more services including legal documentation and licenses. The company is also planning to launch 2 new products including: LegalRaahi.com (marketplace for CA, CS & Lawyers) and Taxraahi.com (online return filing portal for ITR and TDS returns).

LegalRaasta.com helps customers with registrations, licenses and tax filing done via simple and trouble free DIY forms. Currently it provide 50+ services (e.g company incorporation, food license registration, import export code, service tax registration and trademark filing). The startup charges the customer a nominal fee for processing their work and submission of documents with government departments. Customers make payment online and get status updates via its CRM system.

Legal services and compliance market has been pegged at over Rs. 20,000 crore, growing at rate of 25% p.a. Of this, only 3% has been penetrated by the existing online players. The market conditions at present are most conducive to growth of online legal services. Customers are under-served with need for economical, reliable and fast legal services.

LegalRaasta plans to make a dent through better technology and operations. It target 2-4% share of this 20,000 crore market over the next 3 years.

The company's target audience include entrepreneurs, SMEs and professionals. It offer them standardized professional services at approx 50% cost saving. The startup offers services in more than 30 cities across India.

Commenting on their differentiation factors, Himanshu said, "Existing players in the market are a typical lead-based companies, with manual processes for collecting customer information, document submission etc. LegalRaasta.com is a completely tech-based platform which collects information via simplified DIY forms – this information is automatically fed to required government forms/ departments, saving 40% time & 45% cost. Our DIY forms are dynamic and adapts to customer inputs (e.g, subsequent questions changes automatically based on customer inputs such as customer city, no of directors etc). Customers get automated SMSs, emails, and reminders at each stage of the customer lifecycle. They can check their work progress through live customer work tracker."

The startup consists of 25 members in its team, 2200 customers, 11000 daily enquiries and its revenue growing 40% per month.

Going forward, its vision is to develop a fully integrated cloud-enabled platform for hassle-free and reliable legal and financial services. In the year ahead, the startup will focus on improving LegalRaasta.com and expanding sales. The company will setup full service offices in 6+ cities. In parallel, it have planned multiple other products to simply legal and government compliance for its target customer segment.

Check out the below video to know more about Legal Raasta:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NSIg1XT-KM0]