SpotDraft is known as a co-pilot for your legal team that democratizes legal paperwork and speeds up the contract lifecycle. Pulse 2.0 interviewed SpotDraft CEO and co-founder Shashank Bijapur to learn more about the company.
Shashank Bijapur’s Background
What is Shashank Bijapur’s background? Bijapur said:
“Before founding SpotDraft, I was a lawyer. I practiced corporate law at White & Case in New York City and Talwar Thakore and Associates in Mumbai, India. My legal career gave me firsthand experience with the archaic, manual contract management processes that bogged down the sharpest legal minds.”
Formation Of The Company
How did the idea for the company come together? Bijapur shared:
“I was an associate at White & Case when the idea came. I saw how many brilliant legal professionals spent countless hours on administrative work instead of applying their expertise where it truly mattered. I thought, ‘How are people building tech for self-driving cars, yet here I am, copy-pasting words on a contract?’”
“This disconnect became impossible to ignore. I wanted to do more and help lawyers automate the mundane work they inevitably do. This realization ultimately led me and my co-founders, Rohith Salim and Madhav Bhagat, to found SpotDraft.”
“We set out with a clear mission: free legal teams from mundane tasks and enable them to focus on strategic work that leverages their actual training and expertise. We wanted to create technology that would transform how legal professionals spend their time – not just incrementally improving existing processes but fundamentally changing the nature of legal work itself.”
Favorite Memory
What has been your favorite memory working for the company so far? Bijapur reflected:
“Hands down, it is the incredible opportunity I get to connect with the brightest minds in the legal industry. At events like the SpotDraft Summit, our annual flagship gathering, it is a joy to witness the community we’re building. Watching legal professionals from all corners swap challenges, spark solutions, and have those “aha!” moments is electric. It’s where theory turns into action, and I’m reminded why we built SpotDraft: to help people rethink their work and make it better. Those interactions make every second worth it.”
Core Products
What are the company’s core products and features? Bijapur explained:
“SpotDraft is an AI-driven contract lifecycle management (CLM) software platform for in-house legal teams. The platform combines personalization and automation to simplify and enhance the contracting process. SpotDraft handles everything contract-related for the entirety of the contract lifecycle, from drafting and editing contracts with AI help to signing them electronically to keeping everything organized in a searchable, intelligent system.”
“Our solutions include clickwrap agreements, AI-assisted redlining, e-signatures, an intelligent contract repository, and an end-to-end contract management platform.”
Challenges Faced
What challenges have Bijapur and the team faced in building the company? Bijapur acknowledged:
“Lately, we’ve seen a big challenge: many legal professionals worry AI might take their jobs, making them hesitant to embrace tech. At SpotDraft, we firmly believe humans must remain at the center of legal work. AI is a sophisticated assistant, not an autonomous replacement. Our approach has been to demonstrate how AI can enhance a lawyer’s ability to practice law more effectively and efficiently.”
Evolution Of The Company’s Technology
How has the company’s technology evolved since launching? Bijapur noted:
“When we started SpotDraft in 2017, we zeroed in on contract management—legal teams were drowning in that mess.”
“Over time, listening to our customers, we grew into an end-to-end AI-powered platform. In the last year alone, we’ve rolled out smarter features—like tech that learns on the fly and keeps accuracy sky-high while slashing costs. The result? We’ve boosted accuracy by 30% and cut expenses by 95%.”
“Now, we’re pushing further with Sidebar, unveiled at our February 2025 Summit. It’s an AI assistant that will go beyond contracts, helping teams tap into legal know-how, streamline workflows, and make sharper decisions across the board. Sidebar is a soon-to-be-launched product.”
“Every SpotDraft advancement connects information across systems, people, and time to create a fundamentally different way of working.”
Significant Milestones
What have been some of the company’s most significant milestones? Bijapur cited:
“SpotDraft has achieved several notable milestones. In February 2025, we announced a $54 million Series B, which follows our $26 million Series A in March 2023. These investments have fueled SpotDraft’s growth and expansion, with more than 250 employees who serve more than 400 customers globally. We’ve also been recognized in Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies list and Forbes Asia’s 100 To Watch in 2024, validating our approach to transforming legal operations.”
“Our most significant milestones, however, are those of our customers, who have progressed in their journey as our products make them more efficient and accurate.”
Customer Success Stories
When asking Bijapur about customer success stories, he highlighted:
“IPSY, a rapidly growing beauty subscription company, faced increasing complexity in managing contracts as its employee base and legal needs expanded. Initially operating reactively without a dedicated CLM, the legal team struggled to keep up with rising contract volumes. After trying a different tool that didn’t scale with their needs, IPSY implemented SpotDraft.”
“With SpotDraft, the legal team enabled business teams to handle smaller agreements independently, freeing legal to focus on complex contracts. Cross-functional collaboration became easier, and implementation took just 1–2 months. Over time, SpotDraft evolved into a seamless end-to-end solution—including e-signatures—making contract workflows effortless for IPSY’s lean legal team.”
“Another customer of ours, Open, a neo-banking platform, faced similar challenges with their lean legal team handling 1000+ contracts annually. Their contracts were scattered across platforms like Gmail and Google Drive, creating risk and inefficiency. After implementing SpotDraft, they saw a 90% reduction in contract approval turnaround time and 65% fewer errors in contract terms. The entire implementation took just two weeks.”
Funding
When asking Bijapur about the company’s funding details, he revealed:
“SpotDraft has raised $81.5M in funding to date.”
Total Addressable Market
What total addressable market (TAM) size is the company pursuing? Bijapur assessed:
“The expected Total Addressable Market (TAM) for CLM is projected to grow from $1.11 billion in 2022 to around $3.69 billion by 2032 with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 12.33%.”
Differentiation From The Competition
What differentiates the company from its competition? Bijapur affirmed:
“SpotDraft is solving one of the most fundamental challenges for legal teams—the complexity of language itself. Unlike many AI startups that simply layer AI on top of existing workflows, SpotDraft has re-architected how businesses review, negotiate, and manage contracts.”
“What makes SpotDraft truly transformative is that we’re not just making legal work faster—we’re fundamentally reshaping its economics. Traditional legal work is bound by the “dollars by the hour” model, where inefficiency bakes into the system. With SpotDraft’s AI, companies can shift to a fixed-fee model for unlimited legal work, unlocking cost savings, speed, and efficiency at scale.”
“SpotDraft is committed to making sophisticated legal operations accessible to businesses of all sizes. Our model-agnostic approach means we can rapidly integrate new AI advancements as they emerge, ensuring our platform continuously evolves to meet our customers’ needs.”
Future Company Goals
What are some of the company’s future goals? Bijapur emphasized
“We have ambitious growth plans following our $54 million Series B funding. Our primary goal is to transform how legal knowledge flows throughout organizations by continuing to deepen the intelligence within our platform. We’re also focused on talent acquisition and expanding our North American market presence.”
Additional Thoughts
Any other topics you would like to discuss? Bijapur concluded:
“We are organizing a CGI after Dark event at CLOC 2025! Looking forward to meeting professionals from the legal industry for some interesting conversations. SpotDraft will be at booth 309, between 5th to 8th May, where you can meet our experts and get a demo of our product!”
