India’s First Legal Tech Report Launched by CIIE.CO, IIM Ahmedabad’s Entrepreneurship Platform

India’s legal services market stands at USD 1.3 billion - less than 1% of the US legal services market

India has more than 650 plus legal tech startups - the second highest in the world, highlights the CIIE.CO report

The report details the current legal tech landscape, investments, new opportunities and gaps for entrepreneurs

CIIE.CO at IIM Ahmedabad, has recently published India’s first comprehensive report on the legal tech startup ecosystem titled - “Beyond the bench: Promise of Indian legal tech startups”. The report highlights that while the legal services market in India is a small fraction of the much evolved USA market, India ranks second in the world in terms of the number of startups. With insights and opinions from founders, investors, lawyers and law firms, enablers, stakeholders, and subject matter experts, the report outlines the current landscape and highlights promising opportunities in the Indian legal tech sector.

Originally conceptualised as part of the Citizen Innovation Lab (CIL), an initiative by CIIE.CO & Omidyar Network India, the report captures product categories designed for different customer groups and stakeholders. It elaborates the six emerging product opportunities that are ripe for scalable interventions that are Online Dispute Resolution (ODR), Succession Management, Litigation Finance, Court Management, Due Diligence Management and Legal Transcription and Translation Service.

It also dives into digital technologies being leveraged and presents case studies of promising legal tech startups in India. However, despite increasing digitalisation, the vernacular nature of lower court proceedings limits the application of AI which can potentially reduce the burden on the system.

Speaking on the report, Supriya Sharma, Partner - Insights, CIIE.CO said, “Indians spend about 0.48% of GDP on litigation. Entrepreneurial drive aided by cutting edge technology can potentially tackle the inefficiencies found across the legal services landscape. While the sector is in its nascent stages, it is seeing strong tailwinds like the increasing digitalisation of court proceedings. I hope that this report aids the founders and investors aiming to build the legal tech market in India and the world.”

The report recognises the legal tech sector to be a promising bed of opportunities for investors too; the sector is seeing an increasing trend in growth stage funding. The report also enlists some critical ecosystem gaps which, if filled, will unlock the full potential of the legal tech market in India.

With over 650 startups and more than USD 55 million invested, legal tech as a sector may be at the cusp of expansion. Read here: go.ciie.co/legaltech

About CIIE.CO

CIIE.CO is the Innovation Continuum spreading from incubation, acceleration, seed, and growth funding to research. Founded at IIM Ahmedabad in 2002, CIIE.CO has since grown and pivoted to fill the multiple, ever-evolving gaps in the innovation-driven entrepreneurship ecosystem in India. Among its various initiatives, CIIE.CO has conceptualized and hosted India’s first and only CleanTech-focused fund, accelerated over 1000 startups, funded over 500 startups, inspired over a million with our publication - Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish and Startup Compass.

Research at CIIE.CO delivers sector intelligence into emerging areas like deep tech, climate tech and inclusion tech, learning tools, and academic investigations into pressing questions around building startups and their ecosystems. CIIE.CO publishes sharp, data driven insights and resources for founders, policy makers, incubators and investors in the Indian startup ecosystem. 

Know more at www.insights.ciie.co

Atal Incubation Centre (AIC) NMIMS Inks MoU with Legalwiz.in

MUMBAI, India, Aug. 12, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- AIC NMIMS, one among the many Atal Incubation Centres in India funded by Atal Innovation Mission set up by NITI Aayog, has recently inked a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Legalwiz.in, a leading legaltech company founded in April 2016 to help start-ups with legal, financial, corporate and taxation compliances.

Early stage start-ups face difficulties when it comes to understanding and dealing with legal compliance and other technical matters. However, this exclusive industry-academia collaboration between AIC NMIMS and Legalwiz.in will certainly address all the teething problems faced by new start-ups. Whether it is IP registration, Tax registration & Filings, Legalwiz.in will take care of all this and more, enabling the incubatees at AIC NMIMS to concentrate on their entrepreneurial journey and in scaling their start-ups while leaving the regulatory and legal aspects to Legalwiz.in. They also assist the start-ups with trademark, patent and copyright matters, besides legal drafting in a transparent manner. Having successfully served more than 6,000 start-ups and MSMEs, Legalwiz.in's credibility is above par. The fruitful association between AIC NMIMS and Legalwiz.in is certain to give a renewed impetus to the start-up ecosystem in the country, enabling more innovative entrepreneurial ideas and opportunities to emerge.

The incubatees at AIC NMIMS will be able to avail the services of Legalwiz.in at a preferential discounted price. Not to mention, they will get the opportunity to tap into Legalwiz.in's wide business network, both national and international, which will help expand the incubatees' own businesses, making fund raising a less daunting exercise. The incubatees will also be able to avail of the plethora of business services offered by the Legalwiz.in Partner Services Platform, which includes eCommerce, CRM, web development, customer care, financial services, payment gateways, etc, at pre-determined prices.

Mr. Harshal Shah, CEO, AIC-NMIMS Incubation Centre, expressed his happiness about AIC-NMIMS' signing of MoU with Legalwiz.in., and said, "Taking care of legal and compliance issues is a very important aspect of any business and this valuable partnership will help our incubatees and nascent start-ups to soar high without having to worry about the legalities. It will also help promote a conducive environment for the start-up environment to flourish."

Speaking on the occasion, Mr Shrijay Sheth, Founder – Legalwiz.in, said, "We are proud to partner with AIC NMIMS to further accelerate entrepreneurship and startups. I strongly believe that academia-industry collaborations will usher in the next phase of growth and drive entrepreneurship, creating market-facing, customer-ready products and services. Thus we have instituted partnership programs with Atal Incubation Centers (AICs) and entrepreneurship-cells, wherein nascent ventures can access best-in-class services in the ecosystem and focus on scaling their business. Partnering with industry leaders, we are striving to drive a culture of learning, collaboration and synergistic growth in the ecosystem, making it more resilient. We invite AICs & e-Cells to partner with us and usher in the next wave of entrepreneurship by helping to further create a collaborative ecosystem."

About AIC NMIMS

AIC NMIMS Incubation Centre is launched by NMIMS (Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies) in collaboration with the NITI Aayog, Government of India. It is sector agnostic Incubator established to provide budding entrepreneurs the ecosystem to create successful and sustainable businesses. AIC NMIMS helps early-stage startups in their entrepreneurial journey.

For more details, visit: https://aic.nmims.edu/

About NMIMS

Established in 1981, NMIMS is today recognized as a globally reputed university with strong industry linkages. It offers multiple disciplines across eight campuses that consist of 17 specialized schools, more than 17,000 full-time students, and 800+ full-time faculty members, ten faculty members with Fulbright Scholarship and Humboldt International Scholarship for post-doctoral researchers. The Shri Vile Parle Kelavani Mandal (SVKM) laid the foundation stone of this esteemed university with the aim to cater to the rising demand for management institutes in the country. It is known for its consistent academic quality and research-focused approach to holistic education. SVKM's NMIMS has been granted Category-I University status by Graded Autonomy Regulation 2018 by MHRD/UGC, and NMIMS Mumbai Campus is NAAC accredited with A+ (CGPA of 3.59.)

About Legalwiz

Legalwiz.in is a StartUp based at Ahmedabad. Founded by a longtime LegalTech industry veteran Shrijay Sheth. The firm provides professional services as a "simple – affordable – transparent" business model, making it easy to start and manage the businesses in India.

SOURCE AIC NMIMS

LegalTech Startup The Legal Capsule Raises Funds from SucSEED Indovation

Contract Management firm- Attort Legal Consultancy Pvt Ltd (known as The Legal Capsule or TLC), has raised an undisclosed amount from Hyderabad based SucSEED Indovation Fund and many known Angel Investors including S Ramadorai (Former CEO of TCS), Kiran Deshpande (Former CEO of Tech Mahindra), Ravi Nigam (Founder and Former MD of Tasty Bite), Shashank Deshpande (Managing Partner at Pentathlon Ventures) , Vineet Patni (Managing Partner at Wepartner Consult), Shantanu Deshpande (Founder of Bombay Shaving Company) and few others.

The Legal Capsule provides an AI powered Contract Lifecycle Management platform, enabling SMEs and Large enterprises to automate their processes in order to handle end to end contract management while reducing time, cost and risks with legal contracts. Proprietary software helps to manage all compliance, renewals and tasks pertaining to contracts with notifications, thereby mitigating risk for an Enterprise.

The Legal Capsule, unlike other Legal Contract Management (CLM) Products, allows drafting the contracts in MS word within the application, seeking internal approvals, negotiating clauses with counterparties, e-signing using legally binding signatures, e-stamping modules for States across India and storing all contracts in one single repository. It uses AI & ML to analyze the reported findings and offer blockchain-powered authenticated signature solutions that not only captures signatures, but live photographs of the signer, GPS details, IP address and date & time of signing contract.

Co-Founders - TLC

 
Gautami Raiker, Co- Founder and CEO of The Legal Capsule said, “We believe ef ective Contract Management is a must for every Enterprise to fully secure their interests and we endeavor to help them in the digital transformation of this very important space TLC has been helping mid and large sector enterprises to manage and automate contracts right from drafting to execution and renewals.”

She further added that “This seed funding will help us to strengthen our ef orts on client acquisition, accelerating team hirings and global expansion strategy. Most importantly we are delighted to have got access to a set of well known mentors in Industry, who have invested in our company”.

Speaking on why they have invested, VVSN Raju Co-Founder & Partner at SucSEED Indovation Fund, said, “Increasing demand for agile contract management software and changing regulatory compliances with rising complexity due to diversity in sales and licensing models, a sector that will grow exponentially over the next few years. Legal Capsule has grown their revenue by 4x over the past one year. It has a massive and expanding TAM equal to $25Bn which includes an E-signature market of $20Bn and Contract Lifecycle Market of $5Bn.”

About the market Potential in this space:

According to FMI Global and Consulting Pvt. Ltd, “The global contract lifecycle management market revenue totaled US$ 936 Mn in 2021. The overall contract lifecycle management market is expected to reach US$ 2.4 Bn by 2029, growing at a CAGR of 12.2% for 2022 – 2029. Indian Enterprises will see an exponential growth in CLM adoption for better contract visibility and management.”

SucSEED Indovation Fund (SIF) is an AIF Cat-1 Venture Capital Angel Fund with ₹100 crore corpus and has grown out of SucSEED Angel Network (SAN) and IIITH Tech Ventures, an early-stage tech seed initiative with IIIT Hyderabad Foundation. General Partners of the Indovation Fund have 100+ years of cumulative experience within technology, fund management, and start-up ecosystem and have already invested in 60+ startups. SIF attempts to support Indian Innovation for mass needs in the following Six (6) sectors - EdTech, FinTech, Health-tech, Security & RegTech, EnterpriseTech SaAS and Digital Economy & Emerging Tech.

Inter-Operable Criminal Justice System (iCJS) will Make the System More Robust and Help to Track Criminals, Solve Crimes and Make India a Safer Place - All India Bar Association

Yesterday, the central government has approved the implementation of Phase II of the Inter-Operable Criminal Justice System (iCJS) project by the Ministry of Home Affairs at a total cost of Rs 3,375 crore during the period from 2022-23 to 2025-26.

The iCJS project, under the Home Ministry, seeks to digitally link police, forensic, courts, prosecution and prisons databases – at a total cost of Rs 3,375 crore during the period from 2022-23 to 2025-26. 

The All India Bar Association has welcomed the Centre’s move to implement Inter-Operable Criminal Justice System terming that it will make the system more robust and help to track criminals, solve crimes and make India a safer place. 

In a statement, Dr. Adish C Aggarwala, Senior Advocate and Chairman of AIBA said that the long standing need of mapping individuals who have a brush with the law, is now going to be fulfiled with the revolutionary and ground-breaking Inter-Operable Criminal Justice System which is going to be implemented by Home Minsiter Amit Shah under the stewardship of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. 

"It is going to be a major leap forward by digitizing the criminal justice records and making it accessible to law enforcement agencies, laboratories and courts. This will not only make it far more difficult for persons to escape the consequences of their actions, it will also ensure that none, either the guilty or the innocent, is forgotten and that justice is equally meted to all.” – added Dr. Adish C Aggarwala. It will not only save time but also make the system more robust and help to track criminals, solve crimes and make India a safer place, said Dr. Aggarwala, who is also former Vice Chairman of Bar Council of India.

A major lacuna in the criminal justice system, as it exists today, stems from the fact that vital information is spread into isolated databases which are neither accessible nor integrated with other pillars, which are left groping in the dark when faced with grave crimes. Ingenious criminals take advantage of this by manipulating and presenting distorted versions before the different stakeholders. In absence of an efficient system to track him, a person can go scot free after committing a crime by simply assuming a fake identity. 

A person released on bail can escape trial by simply changing his address. The worst placed are victims of non-cognizable offences or others who have to pursue their complaints in court by themselves. They have an ardous task of finding the address of offenders by themselves, getting the accused persons served with summons and ensuring their appearance in court till the case culminates into a final judgment. 

Any time during trial, the said person may escape the system by simply changing his address and not disclosing the new address. A shrewd criminal operating under different names and identities manages to hoodwink the system and it is well nigh impossible to bring such persons to justice. It is not possible for the police to constantly monitor the activities and whereabouts of all accused persons who are not in prison. The criminal laws of India have been framed at a time when social ties were strong and every individual was known to the community. At that time, a person who shifted to a different place could be tracked with the aid of relatives and other persons in localities. 

Today, this is no longer possible and, therefore, there is a crying need of the system to track individuals without depending upon local cues, as has been formulated in other developed countries.

LegalTech Firm Legalwiz.in Inks MoU with National Design Business Incubator (NDBI)

• Aimed at enabling NDBI-backed StartUps to scale rapidly. 
• Providing best-in-class services to Design-driven enterprises. 
• NDBI incubates can also avail all services on Legalwiz.in Partner platform

Ahmedabad, India, July 12, 2021: Legalwiz.in, a leading LegalTech firm, today announced their partnership with National Design Business Incubator (NDBI). The Partnership will enable NDBI's incubates to avail Legalwiz.in's business professional services at preferential pricing. Also, NDBI's incubates can avail all the services on the Legalwiz.in Partner Services Platform – a one-stop source aimed at providing an array of vital business requirements like eCommerce, CRM, web development, customer care, financial services, payment gateways, etc...at pre-negotiated rates.

NDBI is Business Incubator of National Institute of Design (NID) and is supported by Department of Science & Technology (DST), Government of India and Department for Promotion of Industry & Internal Trade (DPIIT), Ministry of Commerce and Industry. NDBI nurtures the culture of entrepreneurship in the creative minds of young entrepreneurs, so that their ideas metamorphose into newer and niftier products or services capable of being utilized commercially.

Started in April 2016 to cater to StartUps & SMEs, Legalwiz.in enables legal, financial, corporate & taxation compliances. Enabled with a robust technology backbone, every step of the process is online to ensure efficiency, transparency and maximum value. LegalWiz.in recently launched the Partner Platform initiative aimed at bringing together different companies on a single platform is aimed at helping clients avail best-in-class expertise for a variety of requirements – all at very competitive pricing.

Speaking on the occasion, Mr Shrijay Sheth, Founder – Legalwiz.in, said, "We are proud to partner with NDBI to further accelerate design-led entrepreneurship and startups. I strongly believe that academia-industry collaborations will usher in the next phase of growth and drive entrepreneurship, creating market-facing, customer-ready products and services. Thus we have instituted partnership programs with Atal Incubation Centers (AICs) and entrepreneurship-cells of Universities, wherein nascent ventures can access best-in-class services in the ecosystem and focus on scaling their business. Partnering with industry leaders, we are striving to drive a culture of learning, collaboration and synergistic growth in the ecosystem, making it more resilient. We invite AICs & e-Cells to collaborate with us like NIDB and usher in the next wave of entrepreneurship."

Reinforcing these views, Mr Amit Jain, CEO – National Business Design Incubator (NDBI), said, "Partnering with institutions is a pioneering step and we are very happy to sign the MoU with LegalWiz.in. They are one of the leading firms in providing regulatory & compliance support to businesses. This support becomes even more critical for the startups who have recently started their entrepreneurial journey. We are sure our startups will benefit a lot from this partnership."

About Legalwiz.in:

Legalwiz.in is a StartUp based at Ahmedabad. Founded by a longtime LegalTech industry veteran Shrijay Sheth. The firm provides professional services as a "simple – affordable – transparent" business model, making it easy to start and manage the businesses in India.


About NDBI:

NDBI is Business Incubator of National Institute of Design (NID) and is supported by Department of Science & Technology (DST), Government of India and Department for Promotion of Industry & Internal Trade (DPIIT), Ministry of Commerce and Industry. NDBI nurtures the culture of entrepreneurship in the creative minds of young entrepreneurs, so that their ideas metamorphose into newer and niftier products or services capable of being utilized commercially.