In an exclusive chat, Shivam Singla – Founder and CEO of Leegality – talks about the company’s growth plans and the impact of COVID-19 on the business.
Shivam Singla
- Tell us about what Leegality does.
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To put it in one sentence – we liberate Indian companies from paper.
Most business processes – from KYC, payments, shopping, etc. are going digital today. However digital journeys are often disrupted when it comes to signing paperwork – leading to delays, inconvenience, and bad user experience. Our main aim is to solve this digital final frontier.
Leveraging the IT Act, we have built a “made for India” SaaS solution that offers businesses a unified platform to sign and collect electronic signatures, pay stamp duty digitally, and manage the other critical compliance and workflow aspects of paperwork in a highly automated way. This offers companies a faster, easier, and more secure way to kickstart commercial relationships with customers, business partners, employees, and agents.
To draw an analogy – look at what payments gateways have done for the payments system today. Collecting or making a payment is so easy and smooth – we often take it for granted. We want to do something similar for paperwork. Through Leegality, signing, stamping, and storing an agreement with your Bank is as fast (if not faster) as making a payment for your Swiggy order.
We believe our vision is shared by the customers we serve. We are already clocking in revenue of approximately INR 1 crore a month and are seeing great traction. Over 750 Indian businesses use us to digitize their critical paperwork - from BFSI Majors like HDFC Ltd., HDB Financial, ICICI Lombard, Axis Finance, IndusInd BFIL, Federal Bank, Bajaj Finance, L&T Finance (among others) to start-ups like Razorpay, WeWork, Cars24, Udaan, Delhivery, Housing, Dunzo, Khatabook(among others).
- What is the market opportunity you see in India? What are your growth and expansion plans?
We see a tremendous business opportunity in India. As per our estimates the market size for digital documentation solutions is approximately USD 4 bn. And so, there is ample opportunity for growth.
We aim to grow the business 10 times over the next 2 years, by catering to organisations across different industries. We are strengthening our teams accordingly. In fact, by the end of this year, we are looking to double our workforce to meet the increasing demand among Indian enterprises and businesses for digitizing their documentation processes.
- What industries do you focus on? Which industries seem to adopt your services the most, and why?
Our solutions apply to organisations across any industry, looking to streamline business operations and enhance the customer experience – real estate, manufacturing, technology, retail, insurance, etc.
However, we find that organisations in the Banking, Financial Services, and Insurance (BFSI) sector use our services the most owing to the sheer volume of paper-based transactions that they process as part of their daily business transactions. Depending on the size and the nature of the institution, the average number of documents processed can run into hundreds, thousands, and even lakhs a year. Our eSign and eStamp solution makes this process much easier and faster – and, of course, more secure!
- Are you looking at raising more funds? What will you use this for?
We are currently in the midst of raising a second round of funding to help us scale up hiring and product development to meet the increasing demand among Indian enterprises and businesses for digitizing their documentation processes. We will be sharing an update on this soon.
- How has COVID impacted your business?
We were extremely lucky and fortunate to be in one of the few industries that grew because of the pandemic and lockdowns.
Most commercial transactions, at least in the formal economy, are just not possible without signed, agreements and other legal paperwork. With the advent of lockdowns and apprehensions at physical contact – businesses were compelled to take their paperwork digital to ensure business continuity and keep transactions flowing.
This reflects in our numbers for the past year. Our revenues grew 4 times after the first lockdown, and we are expecting it to grow by 10 times over the next two years.
We also saw the use of our platform for singular, extremely high-value transactions. One example is when, in March 2020, Leegality was the execution platform for the INR 1100 Crore Orchid Pharma Insolvency Resolution documentation. 22 Banks – Indian and Foreign were able to sign the documentation through us in less than 8 hours – ensuring compliance with the court-mandated 31 March deadline despite lockdown. This has been, to date, the most valuable transaction to be eSigned in India till date. This would have been unthinkable before 2020!
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