LawRato.com - An Online Platform to Find and Hire the Best Lawyers in India
Delhi-based LawRato.com is an interactive online platform that makes it faster and easier to find and hire the best Lawyers in any city / court in India. The startup was founded in January 2015 by Rohan Mahajan & Nikhil Sarup.
SUJATA SANGWAN INTERACTS WITH ROHAN MAHAJAN, LAWRATO’S CO-FOUNDER AND SPOKE TO HIM
How did the entrepreneurial bug bite you?
Back in 2009, I was working in Singapore & Jakarta, Indonesia. A legal issue cropped up during my stint, and surprisingly, I was left dangling for help. Even in the age of internet and globalization, I had no platform to seek a verified and a reliable solution to my problem. It occurred to me how there would be many more stranded like me. And hence, the seeds of LawRato were sown.
How did the idea came to start?
I came back to India in 2011 to give shape to my legal platform, however, the corporate cushy world of assured salary caught me once again and I joined Wizcraft International for 2 years. Finally, in 2013 the bug became too hard to resist and I gave up my well paying corporate job to explore the world of startups. Nikhil and I worked together since 2003 for 8 years and he loved the idea. Nikhil joined me as a cofounder in August 2014.
What are the special key features of your startup?
The key features of our startup are:
(1) Verified and rated lawyers
(2) Free legal advice from top lawyers
(3) Case managers & in-house lawyers to help guide and handhold during the course of selecting a lawyer at the platform
How are you different from the existing ones?
Most of the existing players are either directory listings of lawyers with no verification and credibility or law firms with with web fronts that do not offer the scale and reach of 200 cities (and growing) that we cover currently.
Also, we take up social – legal causes pro-bono to ensure expert legal assistance is given out to the deserving who do not have access to it otherwise.
Funding status and monetization model
We received an Angel funding of USD 100,000 from IAN members and individuals. We retain a part of the first consultation fee paid by the client to consult a lawyer as our revenue.
What are the challenges your startup faced while setting up the business? The best and worst memories...
Well, like most bootstrapped startups, funds was an issue while setting up the business. This was overcome by friends who offered their offices to work from during the first year of our operations. Also the fact that we had worked for a decade + before started up ensured we had some savings that we could use to fund our initial days.
The best memory while setting up is when we won the #hotstartup contest at Investopad Gurgaon and were offered their facility for 6 months as a reward. This not only gave us the motivation and confidence to keep moving, it also gave us great networking with people from the startup circuit. Rohan Malhotra from Investopad and Shanti Mohan from Letsventure were great inspiration and mentors for us.
The worst was when all our savings were burnt and we had no money to continue operations. I had to sell my house in Noida to keep the startup surviving.
What is the market size and market opportunity?
As per a recent research done by Daksh, a Bengaluru based NGO in association with National Law University Delhi, the total cost incurred by litigants in courts is Rs.30,000 Crore each year. This fee is paid towards fighting the 3.3 Crore pending cases and 17 Lakh new cases filed in Indian courts each month.
What are the traction details?
We currently (as of March 2016) get 5000 visitors and 300 enquiries per day on the platform. Out of these, 15-20 clients book a consultation with a platform lawyer. The total registered users on the platform till today are 25,000.
We are targeting 1% of the total 1 Crore consultations market to reach a stage where we facilitate 1,00,000 consults per month.
What advice you want to give to the new entrants in this space?
Entrepreneurship is for people who want to see a change in the way they lead their daily lives. If you feel that you can, in some way, impact the life of a few people, give your idea a shot and see how it works. If your prototype is able to impact even one person’s life, go ahead and get involved in full time entrepreneurship. However, also remember that there is nothing such as work-life balance if you are looking into starting up on your own.
