UK insurance law specialists Kennedys has doubled the size of its Indian tech unit’s office as it seeks to further grow its development team.

The new office space, which is based in Kerala’s IT hub ‘Technopark’, will initially be home to 30 employees but it has the capacity to add up to 40 more. Kennedys’ technology business – Kennedys Kognitive Computing – was created through a partnership with Cognitive Computer Services in 2017 to develop legaltech and insurtech products for its sister company Kennedys IQ. The Indian team has already expanded from just nine employees over the past five years.

Karim Derrick, product and innovation director at Kennedys IQ, said: “Many businesses have been forced to shelve expansion plans after the challenges of the past two years, but it is testament to our brilliant team in India that we have and continue to grow. In the last 12 months alone, we have more than doubled our headcount in Kerala.”

Kognitive’s areas of tech expertise include rapid prototyping, application development, text analytics, machine learning and blockchain. In November, the firm hired two data scientists in Kerala – Akhil Sivanand and Renimol Siby – to bolster its engineering team. Kennedys also that month hired former UK government advisor Antonio Acuña as its head of data strategy in London.

Richard West, a partner and head of client innovation at Kennedys, said: “We have established ourselves as a leader in lawtech and insurtech, with a reputation for excellence and innovation which has enabled us to attract some of the sector’s best specialists. The work of our innovation team in Kerala and around the world has the potential to disrupt the entire legal landscape and revolutionise the way our clients are able to manage their business.”

Last month, a consortium led by Kennedys received funding from innovation agency Innovate UK to develop software that can identify and assess an organisation’s reputational risk. The technology – Reputation Advisor – will analyse corporate documents and other publicly available information to create a reputational risk index that could harm a company’s earnings. The £1.2m project will be part-funded by a £783,000 grant from Innovate UK.

Earlier this year, UK peer Fieldfisher set up a Berlin office to house its new legaltech-powered litigation business Fieldfisher X.