Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas Announces Successful Conclusion of Cohort-I of Prarambh, India’s 1st LegalTech Incubator

LegalTech startups JRTC Intern, Leegality, and LegalMind products, developed under mentorship of CAM Partners and International experts’ mentor, find excellent industry response

On April 30th, Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas announced the successful conclusion of Cohort I of Prarambh, India’s first LegalTech incubator. Started in October 2019, and housed in the Firm’s Delhi office, Prarambh had mentored 3 LegalTech startups namely JRTC Intern, Leegality, and LegalMind for developing meaningful LegalTech solutions that have already started finding widespread acceptance amongst legal professionals.

Talking about first term’s success, Mr. Cyril Shroff, Managing Partner, Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas said, “In keeping with our spirit of being Ahead of the Curve, we set up Prarambh in line with our passion for innovation, as also to help equip the Indian legal professionals with technology solutions that meet India’s unique requirements. The keen interest in LegalTech solutions developed at Prarambh is really heartening and speaks volumes about the potential impact Prarambh is set to make on the Indian legal sector. I really wish to congratulate all our Partners and teams involved in Cohort I, who worked very hard to enable the startups and mentored them to realize their full potential."

Mr. Cyril Shroff further added, “COVID has disrupted the normal functioning of both law firms and our clients. The demand and uptake of technology has accelerated. These are redefining the dynamics between all these stakeholders, and necessitating the need for across the board implementation of technology. We feel the outstanding success of Prarambh’s Cohort I will set the benchmark on development of India centric LegalTech solutions. I wish all our incubatee companies all the best."

Prarambh selected three technology startups for its first cohort from a pool of 51 applicants, after a rigorous assessment of the applications against 12 defined parameters. The cohort was then mentored by CAM Partners, leading international experts and the Innovation Team, who guided the startups to develop pioneering and innovating solutions that are especially developed to comply with Indian laws, and focuses on deploying latest technology including Artificial Intelligence etc. in a way that aligned with the unique needs of the legal industry.

These startups worked on a diverse range of products including internship management, workflow for eStamping and eSignature, and AI based legal research and data analytics. CAM Associates were also involved regularly in guiding and giving feedback to the cohort. Simultaneously, the cohort also enhanced its business skills with sessions from industry experts on marketing and branding, legal and regulatory compliance, customer feedback and satisfaction, financial planning and preparing for investments.

Mr. Rishabh Shroff, Partner, Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas, said, “It is very timely that we started the Prarambh program. The legal tech sector in India was still at a fledgling stage, but now given the impact of the Corona Virus, I foresee that all our clients and in-house teams will need more LegalTech solutions. The normal lawyer-client relationship will be disaggregated and digitized and our Prarambh program will help such legal tech solutions emerge. Looking back to when we started, I can say that it has been a humbling and proud moment for us because of the success Prarambh’s first term has been fantastic."

Talking about Prarambh, Ms. Komal Gupta, Head - Innovation, Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas said, “We embarked on a journey of Innovation with 3 unique startups, 7 months ago. Each startup had a different path to take but the goal was the same – Success and Growth. The happiest and most satisfying memories of our work with our incubatee companies were the collaborative atmosphere and sitting alongside them and helping them from one stage to the next. The knowledge sharing and collaboration through the Prarambh Program was the highlight of this journey. The startups interacted with stellar speakers and mentors, each of them a specialist in their field. During the journey, we also were faced with a number of challenges, but we traversed the challenges, found a workaround, learnt from various situations, took corrective actions and made the next day better. We are sure that these startups are set to achieve the extraordinary and will lead the LegalTech space in India. We wish them all the best."

About Prarambh’s Cohort

JRTC Intern: A talent management platform that connects pre-qualified law students with internship opportunities at law firms, advocate offices and corporates (jrtcintern.com)

Leegality: An eSigning and digital document workflow platform that enables enterprises to digitize and automate document signing and provides e-stamp papers. (leegality.com)

LegalMind: An AI based legal research platform. The platform enables users to perform efficient research supported by analytics and insights. (www.legalmind.tech)

About Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas

Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas takes forward the values going back 103 years, of the erstwhile Amarchand & Mangaldas & Suresh A. Shroff & Co., whose pre-eminence, experience and reputation of almost a century has been unparalleled in the Indian legal fraternity. Tracing its professional lineage to 1917, the Firm of Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas is now the largest full-service law firm in India, with over 750 lawyers including over 130 partners, and offices in India’s key business centres at Mumbai, New Delhi, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chennai and Ahmedabad. The Firm advises a large, and varied client base that includes domestic and foreign commercial enterprises, financial institutions, private equity funds, venture capital funds, startups and governmental and regulatory bodies.

The firm, Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas, was awarded recently awarded with “Law Firm of the Year” & “India Deal Firm of the Year” at ALB India Law Awards 2020, “India – Firm of the Year” at the AsiaLaw Regional Awards 2019 and “India Deal Firm of the Year” at the In-House Community Counsels of the Year Awards 2019. The firm was also named as the “Most Innovative National Law Firm of the Year – India for 2018” at the IFLR Asia Awards, having also been successful in winning the prestigious & coveted “National Law Firm of the Year, 2018 for India” at the Chambers Asia-Pacific Awards. The firm was also voted as the “Employer of Choice for 2020” from India, by the Asian Legal Business, building upon the several awards that the erstwhile Amarchand & Mangaldas & Suresh A. Shroff & Co. had won in the past.

India's Largest Law Firm Launches 1st Legal Tech Startup Incubator in the Country

Mumbai-headquartered  Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas, one of India's largest full-service law firms, has launched first of its kind legal tech startup incubator.

Called as Prarambh, the startup incubator will support new technology-based solutions for the legal industry in such areas as dispute resolution, transactions, law firm operations, legal research, compliance, contract management, access to justice, and legal talent management.

Prarambh Logo

Prarambh will work with young entrepreneurs to come up with new technology-based solutions for the legal industry. This will include areas related to: 

Access to justice dispute resolution transaction efficiencies law firm operations legal research compliance contract management managing legal talent others Prarambh will initially be housed at the New Delhi office of Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas, and later extended to other locations.

The incubator will start out with 3-4 startups, which will be announced the first week of July.

The submission of applications will open from 8^th April and will close on 30^th April. The application link will be available here from 8th April, 2019.

The list of shortlisted startups will be announced on 31^st May 2019. The candidates would be invited for interview and to make a pitch in June 2019, which will be followed by announcement of successful candidates in the 1^st week of July 2019. The successful start ups will move in to the firm’s premises at a suitable date in the next 4 -6 weeks thereafter.

Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas was founded in May 2015 to continue the legacy of the 100-year old Amarchand & Mangaldas & Suresh A. Shroff & Co., whose pre-eminence, experience and reputation of almost a century has been unparalleled in the Indian legal fraternity. With a long and illustrious history that began in 1917, the Firm is the largest full-service law firm in India, with over 700 lawyers, including 120 partners, and offices in Mumbai, New Delhi, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad and Chennai. 

In 2017, the law firm became the first firm in India to adopt artificial intelligence (AI) technology in its day-to-day practice, signing up with Canadian machine learning software provider Kira Systems to process contracts and other legal documents more quickly and accurately.

Source - Business Standard

Legal Technology Startup Enterslice Launches Its Operations in Mumbai

In today's very dynamic global business environment entrepreneurs face serious, diverse challenges. Legal technology company Enterslice can help in a very real way. In an effort to deliver to clients the best, smoothest experience possible, Enterslice recently celebrated the launch of their new office and hiring of first round of employees in Mumbai, India. Expectations surrounding the new launch are high.

"Mumbai will be the strategically important location for us as it is the financial capital of India," commented Vinay Singh, CEO of Enterslice. “Mumbai will be our base as we help entrepreneurs succeed both here in India and across the world. We couldn't take our role and responsibility as consultants more seriously."

Founded in 2014 by Bittu Kumar and Narendra Kumar, Enterslice helps entrepreneurs start and manage business in India. Based out of Noida, the company claims to be driven by artificial intelligence

According to the company, Enterslice offers a very wide range of services that touch on all areas of conducting business inside India. Some highlights include: NBFC Registration, Company Registrations; NGO Registrations; Trademark and Patent Services; Project Management and Control Services; Cash Flow and Cost Management; and perational Support, to name just a few. Many other legal technology needs are also covered with complete professionalism, a devoted eye spent on detail and a commitment to staying cost effective.

Early feedback for Enterslice has been positive across the board.

M. Sadiq, recently said in a five-star review, “We couldn't be more pleased with what Enterslice has brought to the table for us. We are saving money and in turn able to pay more attention to meeting our own customer needs. Fully recommended."

HiGrit Is An On-Demand Legal Platform For Startups

Nowadays we have a lot of on-demand services, from food to health services and now you can get a lawyer as well. HiGrit is a startup that aims to tap into this area and bring the legal servies to an online platform and make the entire process much easier for all of us.

THE IDEA

Based out of Delhi, HiGrit.com is a one-stop solution for all your legal needs. It is a platform  to organize and simplify legal search service. It was created with the intention of improving and modernizing an average consumer's access to legal assistance. Another aspect of services they offer is related to startups, where they help entrepreneurs and small businesses by providing them with whatever legal aid they might require. Moreover, they have also covered the other front here, by ensuring that the registered lawyers get a wider audience as their prospective clients. They aim to help people from both ends by connecting lawyers to clients.

HiGrit believes in becoming an efficient tool, understanding users’ needs and connecting them with a lawyer who can provide them with the right legal advice. With HiGrit, businesses and individuals can efficiently access and manage quality and licensed lawyer/CA/CS service, round the clock.

MEET THE MAKERS

Manish Singh: He is an alumnus of IIT – Kharagpur 2010 batch and HEC Paris as well. He has worked at Amazon Europe Headquarters, Luxembourg, and Ashish Bais as well.

Ashish Bais: He did his Masters in IS from Illinois State University with 5-year work experience in Business Intelligence from California.

COMPETITION

The following firms are the ones that provide competition to HitGrit

• Indiafilings


• Cleartax


• VakilSearch


• Lawrato

HiGrit mainly offer the following 4 services which set it apart from its competition.

1. Take an appointment with a Lawyer/CA/CS to discuss your case in specific- Customers can browse, sort and filter on these professionals and book a phone or in-person appointment by paying fees on their platform. There would be a fixed 20% commission which would be held from this fees and the rest would be passed on to the legal professional. Currently, the fees range is from 1000-8000 INR on their platform as quoted by lawyers themselves.


2.  Call an expert now- There is a flat rate of 500 INR for a 10-15 minutes call session with an expert legal professional. Their cut is 100 INR and rest would be transferred to Legal professional you would be speaking to.


3.  Start/Manage a business- These are their in-house services where they plan to help businesses with all their legal problems from incorporation to compliances. They have a flat & customized fees for the same. They will be able to retain higher commission in such services. Customers for these services would form a long-term alliance and would result in repeated revenues.


4.  Free Q&A- This service is intended to populate knowledge base on their platform and also customers benefit from free advice. In return for giving free answers, legal professionals are able to win initial confidence from customers and get reviews and ratings and also chances to acquire a prospective customer.

FUNDING

HiGrit has received initial seed fund from seasoned entrepreneurs from Chandigarh, who have partnered with HiGrit to disrupt the traditional, tedious & confusing compliance processes.

MILESTONES

HiGrit is a fast growing legal platform, with an Alexa ranking of under 11K in just 4 weeks of service. It has resolved 170 inquiries and severed 22 customers. The average ticket size is INR4500, with a margin of 25%. Total revenue has been around INR99,000/-

PLAN OF ACTION

HiGrit is soon going to launch a service for startup advice where a budding startup could make an instant phone call to get all the advice they need to make sure their startup is compliant with the law and also they reap all the benefits of government schemes. Also, they are planning to launch an android app by the end of July.

 

Legal Tech Platform Lawrato Launches LawBot - India's First Legal Advice Facebook Messenger Chatbot

LawRato.com, India’s leading lawyer search and legal advice platform launched the country’s first self-help Facebook messenger chat bot today Nicknamed “LawBot”, the chatbot that lets users search for legal answers, ask a free legal question and find the best lawyer for their legal requirement. Users can also book a consultation with the lawyer recommended by the bot by paying a nominal consultation fee. The bot can be accessed through https://m.me/lawrato/, or by sending a message at LawRato’s facebook page.

Available across India, LawBot allows users to enter their legal problem in the form of a question and throws up the most relevant answers and recommended lawyers for the particular problem using an AI algorithm developed in-house at LawRato.com. The users can then either continue by booking a consultation with one of the recommended lawyers, or submit their question to the LawRato.com lawyer network which is then answered for free by one of the network lawyers within minutes.

For example, if a user types ‘How can a husband get child custody after mutual divorce’, LawRato.com’s LawBot through its real-time search algorithms throws similar answers by lawyers and recommends the top 3 divorce lawyers in the user’s city at the LawRato.com platform.

Founded in Jan 2015, New Delhi based LawRato.com is India’s leading legal advice and lawyer search platform. With 1500+ top verified lawyers from multiple practice areas across 200 cities in India, LawRato has answered more than 20,000 legal questions asked by users at its platform and has helped over 2000 users consult and hire the right lawyer for their legal requirement so far.

“We realized that a many users were uncomfortable in revealing their details while seeking answers to their legal queries. Although users can reach us through our phone helpline and a post-a-question options, more users start the conversation through chat, choosing anonymity due to the nature of their legal problems. Many just want to check their options, and know the repercussions of their actions, before they actually go ahead and consult a lawyer.

LawRato’s LawBot helps you access the collective wisdom of our legal partners, providing access to our 50,000 lawyer opinions for over 20,000 legal topics, ranging from matrimonial issues to criminal defence. LawBot  has also been given a character of its own and it tries to have conversation that lightens the serious legal mindset of the user. Try asking it to find “the cheapest lawyer”, or “how to get out of jail”.

“We want to make good legal advice easily accessible and confidential, and believe that the LawBot will allow more people find solutions to their legal problems in a better way. As more users interact, LawBot gets smarter at finding the best answers and lawyers.” says LawRato’s co-founder and CTO Nikhil Sarup.

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]