Indian law firm Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas (CAM) has unveiled the latest group of legal technology startups set to take part in its second tech incubator programme.  

The new cohort will be launched virtually and will run for 16 weeks, the firm said on Monday.  

The announcement comes a year after the successful conclusion of the firm’s first tech incubator, dubbed Prahambh, which saw a trio of legaltechs share a workspace at CAM’s Delhi headquarters until the completion of the programme last May.  

This time, three more legaltechs — Conduct, Presolv360, and PropertyChek — will be joining the incubator, known as Prahambh 2. The trio were selected from a pool of 24 applicants and will aim to develop scalable solutions for the legal and corporate sectors that “help fill a critical void” in the Indian legal market and address the disruption caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.  

Both Conduct and Presolv360 focus on data-driven solutions, with the former specialising in creating diversity and inclusion management software and the latter on providing cloud-based dispute resolution services for small-to-mid value disputes in India.  

Meanwhile, PropertyChek, which lays claim to being India’s first property legal process management software-as-a-service platform, helps banks and financial companies conduct title due diligence and registration before issuing loans for real estate properties.  

As part of the project, the startup trio will partake in a “tailor-made” mentorship scheme and will be guided by industry experts and CAM lawyers in order to develop tech products molded to serve the “unique” dimensions of the Indian legal market.  

CAM partner Rishabh Shroff said the firm took the lessons it learned from the first cohort and zeroed in on companies in the ‘ready to scale’ stage for the new programme.  

Covid-19 inevitably played a key role in the selection process, as the demand for tech-focused business solutions skyrocketed as companies moved the entirety of their dealings online over 2020. 

“Besides making it more practical to do an online cohort this year due to Covid, we are confident we would be able to achieve our goals to expeditiously help develop technology solutions servicing the legal needs of law firm and other companies, the demand for which has extrapolated in the Covid era,” Shroff said.  

Last year, the selected participants included talent management platform JRTC Intern, eSigning and digital document workflow platform Leegality, as well as AI-powered legal research tool Legal Mind. At the time, CAM managing partner Cyril Shroff said the first-of-its-kind programme “set the benchmark” for the development of India-centric legaltech solutions.  

Recently, Allen & Overy announced the latest raft of startups set to join the fifth cohort of its Fuse tech innovation incubator, tapping 11 legal and financial tech companies amid rising demand for digital legal solutions during the pandemic.