SpotDraft, an Indian startup that provides AI-powered legal software, has announced raising $26 million in its Series A funding round anchored by Premji Invest, the family office of Wipro chairman Azim Premji.
The funding round was also backed by a host of venture investors, including Prosus Ventures, 021 Capital, Arkam Ventures, Riverwalk Holdings, and 100x Entrepreneur Fund, according to SpotDraft’s announcement.
SpotDraft, started in 2017 by Shashank Bijapur, Madhav Bhagat, and Rohith Salim, provides an AI-powered contractor lifecycle management (CLM) platform to draft and execute legal contracts.
The startup said it has so far processed more than 1 million contracts that saved 1.5 million hours on legal work for customers, including Airbnb, Notion, Panasonic, Strava, and Chargebee.
“We like to think of what we are building as a co-pilot for legal teams – a system that acts as a strategic partner for in-house counsels by taking care of the repetitive tasks and thereby enabling them to focus on higher leverage activities,” said Bijapur, the co-founder and CEO.
Using the platform, teams can create, manage, review, and execute contracts, store and organize agreements, submit legal requests and approvals, and generate risk reports automatically from a dashboard.
SpotDraft said its platform can also be used by sales, market, human resources, business operations, and procurement teams.
The latest funding, which brings the company’s total funds raised to date to $30.5 million, is earmarked for further product development and aggressive expansion in North America, which has been identified by SpotDraft as a key market.
SpotDraft’s funding comes as legaltech startups have piqued the interest of investors. For instance, Amikus AI, which uses AI to automate the drafting and assessment of legal contracts, raised over Rs96 lakh in a pre-seed round in December led by Inflection Point Ventures.
LegalKart, which provides instant legal consultation, also raised Rs4 crore from Mumbai Angels last year.
In 2019, only one legal tech startup in India raised funds ($2 million) from PE-VC investors, according to data from Venture Intelligence. That number rose to two in 2020 and four in 2021.