Online dispute resolution (ODR) platform Sama recently bagged a multi-shark deal — boAt co-founder Aman Gupta, Emcure Pharmaceuticals executive director Namita Thapar and OYO Rooms founder Ritesh Agarwal — on business reality television series Shark Tank India.

One of the three founders of Sama — West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences graduate Pranjal Sinha — recalls how the issue of an overburdened Indian judiciary inspired the team to look into the online domain and provide dispute resolution services.

Origins

Sama is the brainchild of Sinha, Vikram Kumar and Akshetha Ashok. Kumar, an engineer, met Sinha at a tech event and teamed up to make a prototype called iJustice or internet justice.  

But such a venture came with many challenges. 

“For the first 2-3 years, there were no cases as such. The only case we got was filed by my brother. We realised that people are not coming to the platform. I think the answer was that people don't know awareness. People think mediation is meditation,” Sinha says.

He reveals that 54% of the population in the country hasn’t even tried ADR, let alone ODR.

Then walked in Ashok, a college mate of Sinha’s who was active in stage plays and music. Together, they conducted nukkar nataks or street plays and distributed pamphlets to raise awareness of the advantages of online dispute resolution among locals. 

Resistance from lawyers

The team’s enterprising way of creating awareness was met with strong resistance from local lawyers, who reckoned that clients were being driven away from courts to settle disputes virtually. 

While performing one such street play, the team members were gheraoed and heckled at the hands of the crowd, which got closer and closer to them as the play ended.

“There was a volunteer distributing pamphlets on the side. We got some 8-10 cheque bounce cases. We were basically trying to be as resourceful, to create awareness about mediation,” says Sinha.

The exercise did not prove fruitful for the team, but initiated a dialogue on the concept of mediation. 

The turning point came in the form of the ICICI Bank-Agami ADR challenge, which the team won in April 2019. Things began to look brighter for Sama since then.

Although the market looked promising, Sinha feels it was a gradual and organic process for the ODR process to pick momentum.

He recalled that the day of the challenge was the day on which his last exam in college was being held.

“In May, we shifted to Bangalore and got our first salaries and started working on building an ODR platform. Essentially, 2019 was the time when we started to get into it in a bigger manner, in a full-fledged manner,” he says.

The path ahead

On the perception of ADR or ODR being a suitable only for low stake matters, Sinha argues that the model can be effective for high stake matters as well. He illustrates that most of the top international corporates have multi-tier ADR clauses in their agreements.

“I forgot the exact number, but I think some 95 percent of top Fortune 1,000 companies have like ADR clauses. Their law firms are advising them that if you have disputes be smart about it, don't spend litigation money, try to settle it,” he pointed out.

The Shark Tank experience brought a sense of validation for Sinha and his team, who were a bundle of nerves before the episode aired. The team received a tremendous response post the airing of the episode and the clamour seems to have settled gradually.

Sinha plans to explore a hybrid approach, now that the Sama has been offered investment. 

“There are certain high stake matters. Like builders and buyers, where 50 per cent of the process can be online. The actual hearing can be offline. We feel like that might be a better model for high stake models for high stake disputes. The investment can be helpful there. We just want to really improve the full delivery experience of dispute resolution, like dispute resolution as a customer centric service that there is a flat fee, there's a fixed fee, there is a fixed timeline, there is no uncertainty,” he says.