In talks with Shivam Singla, Founder and CEO, Leegality, a document infrastructure platform for banks and financial institutions that helps digitally transform paperwork processes.

CXOToday has engaged in an exclusive interview with Mr. Shivam Singla, Co-Founder and CEO, Leegality

Tell us about Leegality and its offerings

Signed agreements, forms, and other legal documentation are the foundation of modern commercial transactions. Unfortunately, this signing process mostly happens on paper, even for digital work. This physical process causes delays, bogs down business teams, increases costs and creates legal risk for Indian businesses – across all sectors – on a daily basis.

We founded Leegality to completely eliminate this problem. At Leegality, we provide a unified platform that allows Indian businesses to digitally transform their paperwork execution process (creation, signing, stamping, storage etc.) in a fast, easy and compliant way.

Today, Leegality is the digital documentation partner to over 2000 Indian businesses including group entities from 8 out of the top 10 banking conglomerates in India. We recently raised USD 5 million from IIFL Fintech Fund and utilise the funds to accelerate customer acquisition, invest in product development, and rapidly enhance customer experience.

What kind of technology have you invested in to make Leegality a future-ready brand?

At a time when humans are making all types of technological innovations such as AI, genome sequencing, CRISPR, and making telescopes powerful enough to look back billions of years, the use of paper and our reliance on it has not changed.

One major obstacle that businesses face today on their way to becoming truly paperless is legal documentation – contracts, forms and other similar paperwork. To solve this, we offer a platform through which Indian businesses can deploy digital paperwork capabilities like eSign, Digital Stamping, Execution Automation, Sign Security, Storage and more – in a fast, easy and compliant way.

Such offerings make our customers future-ready and put them on a path to eliminating paper. Doing so helps them transform paperwork – from a business cost to a formidable competitive advantage.

How has the digital infrastructure transformed paperwork and saved costs?

The pandemic brought significant changes across industries and the most prominent change amongst all has been increased inclination towards digitisation. While the digital mode of work quickly became popular during covid outbreak, industries, especially the BFSI sector had to face challenges due to the mammoth paperwork that had to be digitised in no time to ensure continuity of operations.

In recent years, India has made significant progress in building its digital infrastructure. Government initiatives such as Digital India have enabled the widespread adoption of digital services across the country and boosted the adoption of digital infrastructure. Initiatives such as Electronic Document Management, E-Governance, Electronic payments, and electronic signatures have enabled organisations to reduce, if not eliminate, the amount of paperwork they generate and handle. This has led to significant cost savings, improved efficiency, and increased transparency.

Leveraging the IT Act, we have built a “made for India” SaaS solution that offers businesses a unified platform to digitise every layer of the paperwork journey – across verticals and use cases. This means things like electronic signatures, electronic stamp duty, document automation, document assembly, and more – all under one roof. Companies get a one-stop solution to digitally transform their paperwork processes across verticals and use cases.

How today’s digital customer journeys are not truly digital – what is Leegality doing to help?

India has seen a tremendous increase in digital adoption in recent years, but there are still areas where the customer journey is not fully digital. Limited digital infrastructure, digital illiteracy, distrust in digital transactions, and non-recognition of digital documents for legal purposes are some of the challenges we face on the path to becoming truly digital.

To address these challenges, government awareness drives for Digital India have been leading the way to spread awareness, dispel misinformation, and protect the public from online fraud. However, private tech solutions often skip this – and cater to a limited segment. We at Leegality have made a mindful choice to avoid this mistake  and have built-in “accessibility” capabilities that make our interface accessible by any Indian, anywhere.

An example of this is when we recently launched Local Language eSign Journeys – giving companies the ability to offer eSign interfaces in an Indian language other than English.This allows institutions like Banks and MFIs the ability to offer digital journeys, meeting the customers wherever  they are”.

How has Digital India paved the way for the digital age in India and enabled rapid digital infrastructure development?

Digital India is the government’s initiative to transform India into a digitally empowered society. Launched in 2015, the program aims to provide citizen-centric and all-around digital connectivity, digitization of various services, and digital literacy.

Digital India has indeed paved the way for a digital age. Initiatives such as E-Governance, digital infrastructure, digitization of services, and digital payments have penetrated all sectors and laid the framework for a strong digital economy.

These initiatives have also led to the development of digital infrastructure and have further resulted in deeper internet penetration of high-speed internet. The availability of affordable smartphones has further boosted the adoption of digital services.

For us, more specifically, India Stack paved the way for Aadhaar eSign – which was the key first step in enabling democratic access to digital flows for paperwork for 1 billion + Indians. We were able to build layers on top of Aadhaar eSign to provide businesses the solution they needed.

What is the true reason for the Bharat markets to experience continued economic growth – why do you think brands are rushing to tier 3 and 4 markets to unlock the next era of growth?

Indian metro cities have long carried the bastion for the growth of business for long. With the rising level of disposable income, competition between brands, booming startup ecosystem, and more aware customers than ever, the markets in these locations are fast becoming saturated. To sustain growth and keep shareholders happy, brands now need to find their foothold in emerging markets to expand and increase their market share. These markets are the last leg of growth for all businesses, irrespective of product category, and so, brands are hasting to tier 3,4, and 5 markets to find their customer.

Several other factors have led to this move and enabled further growth. For one, higher-speed internet and the availability of internet-enabled affordable smartphones has helped brands to identify and recognise their customer. However, to ensure long-term growth, India needs deeper internet penetration and sensitise its rural population to be free from online fraud and crime.

Future Plans for Leegality?

While we’ve grown leaps and bounds in the last few years – we’ve still only scratched the surface. The default way to do paperwork in India – in most industries – is still physical. Our mission, for the foreseeable future – will be to make Leegality the default way to do paperwork in India. So really, our plans for the near future are to continue executing and innovating – providing cutting edge digital document infrastructure for a wider variety of industries.

We’ve also done incredibly well to be cash flow positive for more than a year – largely thanks to our business model. We would want to keep enhancing this model and grow the business 10x in the next 2 years in a sustainable way.