Gurgaon-based contract automation startup SpotDraft has raised $550,000 (Rs 3.5 crore) in seed funding led by venture capital firm Hunch Ventures, the startup said in a statement.
Japan-based Spiral Ventures (previously known as IMJ Investment Partners), 500 Startups, Singapore Angel Network, and Citrus Payments and Cube founder Satyen Kothari also participated in the round.
Run by Draftspotting Technologies Pvt Ltd, SpotDraft will use the capital to scale the business and market the product, the statement added.
The startup was founded earlier this year by Shashank Bijapur and Madhav Bhagat. A Harvard Law alumnus, Bijapur previously worked as chief information officer at Rupeepower, a marketplace for loans and credit cards. Bhagat, a Carnegie Mellon alumnus and former Google software engineer previously co-founded CoderBhai, which provides digital design and coding services to enterprises.
SpotDraft offers an artificial intelligence-powered platform to draft and execute legal contracts. Besides this, the firm’s proprietary AI tells users what is good and bad about their existing contracts, without any additional cost or fees. The contract automation is an $80-billion market globally.
Over the last nine months, SpotDraft claims to have executed over 3,500 contracts.
“Moving forward, SpotDraft will provide users a complete end-to-end contract management solution at the press of a button. For now, the focus is on the freelance market, however, the target base will soon grow to include small and medium-sized business," Bijapur said.
A number of players in the legal-tech space such as Vakilsearch, LegalRaasta, MyAdvo, and LawRato among others have garnered investor interest over the past few months.
In September this year, Mumbai-based legal-tech firm Legasis Services Pvt. Ltd has acquired research and advisory firm EthicsIndia.
In May this year, Legal Raasta Technologies Pvt. Ltd, which provides legal services to SMEs, entrepreneurs, and professionals, raised nearly $5 million (around Rs 32 crore) in its Series A round from Delhi-based venture capital firm Impanix Capital.
In December, MyAdvo, a platform that connects consumers with lawyers, raised an undisclosed amount in angel funding led by Pradyumna Dalmia, co-founder of Calcutta Angels Network, through LetsVenture, a funding platform.
In November 2016, Delhi-based LawRato secured pre-Series A funding from the Indian Angel Network.
In July 2016, on-demand legal services provider HiGrit Services Pvt. Ltd raised an undisclosed amount in seed funding from two Chandigarh-based investors.