To invest in emerging LegalTech and financial inclusion start-ups.
The fund will promote justice, entrepreneurship, and legal innovation.
New Delhi: Delhi NCR-based LegalPay, India’s largest legal and insolvency financier, has launched the country’s first-of-its-kind equity fund, Justice and Inclusion (JAI) Fund. The approximately $2 million fund would invest in emerging LegalTech companies and start-ups working towards financial inclusion.
The fund’s vision is to promote robust technology development in the current legal framework and speed up the legal processes through innovative legal products and solutions.
Founded by Kundan Shahi, LegalPay is a tech-focused litigation finance platform that democratizes investment in alternative-investment products in the legal domain, including insolvency financing and litigation funding. The New Delhi-based fintech start-up specializes in asset-backed fixed-income and legal financing products with lucrative IRRs ranging from 18% to 30%.
On the launch of the JAI fund, Shahi said, “The emergence of the start-up boom in the Indian market attracted investors from all strata of society, leading to the creation of various investment funds. However, legal innovation is often neglected in the sector, leading to the slow progress of legal innovation in India. Through this fund, LegalPay will invest Rs. 25 lacs- Rs 50 lacs each in over 30 start-ups in the next two years. We have observed the inability of start-ups that work for society to attract substantial capital to solve legal and socially inclusive problems. The fund aims to solve this by enabling such businesses to leverage our network and technological capabilities that we have developed over the last few years.”
LegalPay has created an investment committee chaired by well-known entrepreneur-turned-investor and global philanthropist Ashwini Kakkar to enable an impartial funding mechanism. The committee also comprises Kundan Shahi, Founder and CEO of LegalPay, Kashish Grover, COO of LegalPay, and Ojasvi Babbar, CEO of Amity Incubation Centre.
“Indian legal market is largely unorganized with over USD 30 billion opportunities for budding start-ups. LegalPay’s success over the last three years in the legal financing market has played a pivotal role in promoting access to justice through financing the legal costs of businesses and individuals. With the launch of the JAI Fund, LegalPay will be contributing enormously towards developing the legal framework and reducing pressure on the judiciary through innovative legal products,” Kakkar added.
The fund’s anchor lead is a seasoned investor and marquee entrepreneur, Ambarish Gupta, Founder of Basis Vectors and ex-founder of Knowlarity. Gupta says that the JAI Fund would institutionalize capital and promote the development of the ecosystem in the legal-tech market by budding entrepreneurs who are solving problems in the legal market through innovative technology.
