ContractPodAi has secured a $55 million Series B investment round led by US venture capital firm Insight Venture Partners with participation from the company’s Series A backer, Eagle Proprietary Investments. The $55m investment represents Europe’s largest legaltech Series B fundraise (and, apparently, the largest Series B round for any CLM provider globally.) We speak to co-founder and CEO Sarvarth Misra.
ContractPodAi, which as a small business is still exempt from filing its full accounts in Companies House, is an end-to-end contract lifecycle management solution for all three aspects of contract management: contract generation, contract repository, and third-party review. Its clients include Bosch Siemens, Total and EDF Energy, whose in-house teams are using its technology to help transform their contractual processes. The company, which just closed its financial year, again saw revenue growth of an astonishing 300%. According to Owler, ContractPod has a revenue of $4m and 60 employees, although this has not been verified by our own sources.;new advadsCfpAd( 163652 );;new advadsCfpAd( 155474 );;new advadsCfpAd( 155475 );;new advadsCfpAd( 163652 );;new advadsCfpAd( 155474 );( window.advanced_ads_ready || jQuery( document ).ready ).call( null, function() {var $legalslider1821142887 = jQuery( “.legal-slider-1821142887” );$legalslider1821142887.on( “unslider.ready”, function() { jQuery( “div.custom-slider ul li” ).css( “display”, “block” ); });$legalslider1821142887.unslider({ delay:10000, autoplay:true, nav:false, arrows:false, infinite:true });$legalslider1821142887.on(“mouseover”, function(){$legalslider1821142887.unslider(“stop”);}).on(“mouseout”, function() {$legalslider1821142887.unslider(“start”);});});
You’ll recall that Insight Venture Partners, which is based in New York and specialises in scale up technology companies, is the backer behind Kira Systems, which itself received $50m in Series A funding in September last year.
We asked Misra if ContractPodAi had run a process or gone to market to secure the funding and he said: “Not at all – the market has changed so much and analysts are tracking legal tech SaaS companies. We were doing what we were doing we were doing and of course had plans in place but were in no rush. For us the quality of the investor is more important than the liquidity. What they bring is the experience and expertise. We had a really good conversation and meeting of the minds.”;new advadsCfpAd( 163650 );;new advadsCfpAd( 156117 );;new advadsCfpAd( 163901 );;new advadsCfpAd( 163650 );;new advadsCfpAd( 156117 );( window.advanced_ads_ready || jQuery( document ).ready ).call( null, function() {var $legalslider946855465 = jQuery( “.legal-slider-946855465” );$legalslider946855465.on( “unslider.ready”, function() { jQuery( “div.custom-slider ul li” ).css( “display”, “block” ); });$legalslider946855465.unslider({ delay:10000, autoplay:true, nav:false, arrows:false, infinite:true });$legalslider946855465.on(“mouseover”, function(){$legalslider946855465.unslider(“stop”);}).on(“mouseout”, function() {$legalslider946855465.unslider(“start”);});});
Misra adds: “We are very capital efficient and have been bootstrapped for the longest time. That is being recognised by the market and the plan is to continue to do what we’re doing.”
ContractPodAi’s growth comes as in-house clients such as Bosch look to transform their working practices. Misra says: “What you typically see are larger businesses, even the biggest legal teams, in need of transformation. They are all having the same key issues around how do we become more efficient around the contract management process.
”We have everything together within one CLM ecosystem and we have built a toolkit that the in-house lawyer needs to drive in-house transformation. There are multiple use cases from assembly to repository to discovery to third party review. We’re building our our ecosystems with partners such as IBM and Workshare to save them having to buy multiple apps for contract management.”
This is just the latest example of consolidation and the need for an integrated platform and Misra says: “It’s no different to any other market where it starts to get more mature (this is still a nascent stage in legal) and in the next few years we will see more platforms.”
Founded in 2012, ContractPodAi now serves customers across every continent, with offices in London, New York, San Francisco, Glasgow, and Mumbai.
Jeff Lieberman, managing director at Insight Partners, said in a statement: “We are hugely impressed by ContractPodAi’s phenomenal and capital efficient growth and, most importantly, by the passionate testimonies their customers share about the game-changing impact of the ContractPodAi platform. This momentum speaks to a real and unmet market need for a truly horizontal, end-to-end CLM ecosystem in driving digital transformation efforts across legal ops. With this investment in ContractPodAi, we are excited to partner with a team backed by a clear vision and strong leadership that has demonstrated a unique ability to build products that both legal and business users love.”
Insight Partners is headquartered in New York City and has backed some of Europe’s top technology and software companies, including BlaBlaCar, Calm, Darktrace, Delivery Hero, Hello Fresh, and Shopify. Josh Fredberg, formerly of SAP Ariba, and Paul Szurek, Vice President at Insight Partners, will join the board of ContractPodAi. Szurek was formally appointed as a director of the company on 28 June.