India’s legal market represents an enormous opportunity for legal startup entrepreneurs. With a Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of 1.877 trillion USD (2013), it ranks as “the seventh-largest economy in the world measured by nominal GDP and the third-largest by purchasing power parity.”
As in other economies in the Asia-Pacific region, some legal startups have begun to blossom in India. Among them is legistify- founded 2 1/2 years ago by Akshat Singhal. Here’s our interview with him about what logistics offers — and what its’ goals are for the future:
What is legistify and what inspired its creation?
Legistify is an online legal facilitation platform which offers technology-backed legal services to help users get sorted out their crucial legal needs. It started off nearly 2.5 years ago when I was facing some legal issues with a different idea that. I was working on it. That idea couldn’t take off as expected due to legal complications but gave me something which became even closer to my heart- “making legally accessible”.
I as an entrepreneur relate to every other guy who is trying to do something of their own when he/she faces all sorts of possible legal dilemmas or does not get sound legal advice at the most crucial stage of their business.
How does legistify add value to clients?
The entire idea behind the creation of a technology platform in the legal domain is to solve a major customer pain point- the hassles of getting your legal demands met. Legistify offers a unique platform for the automated creation of legal agreements online, without any hassle. The USP is their highly intuitive and easy-to-use questionnaires which help users create seemingly complex agreements with great ease and within minutes.
They currently have more than 70 automated agreements covering 12+ major documentation domains. Apart from the automated ones you can also request a custom agreement through the platform itself.
The other interesting bit that Legistify provides is an automated dashboard with features like step progress, defined timelines. And a real-time chat feature to name a few for individual services like company incorporation, IP & tax registrations and much more. This section on their platform with nearly 60 listed services is surely a promising and extremely unique offering.
Will legistify focus on the Indian market exclusively – or do you have future plans to expand internationally?
Considering the huge need for legal tech in India, legistify aims to focus on its Indian clientele at the moment. Keeping in mind the great response that we are getting from our clients PAN India. We would want to first strengthen our core offerings for this segment with an aim to expand to global markets in the coming years for sure though that will require a significant amount of resources.
What future do you see for legal startups in India?
Though there are only a handful of legal startups in India. At the moment this sector had certainly been catching a lot of interest from fellow entrepreneurs and investors across the nation. We see a lot of upcoming legal startups with a vision to solve various existing problems in the current legal system. All of these have great potential to become big and successful in the long run. This shall also bring in a lot of openings in terms of market opportunities and innovation in this field pretty soon.
What advice would you give aspiring legal startup entrepreneurs?
There are certain benchmarks which we follow at testify based on our experiences, key learning and understanding of the market. Sleeping over the following thoughts might be very beneficial for aspiring legal startups:
- A kick-ass product is a must.
- Innovation is the key, copying isn’t.
- The customer always comes first.
- Execution is everything.
