Partha Mudgil has joined BRYTER as the Head of its Financial Services Unit and will be leading the group’s global rollout. Mudgil was previously the cofounder and COO of Nakhoda, the specialist tech development team of global law firm Linklaters.
Mudgil left Linklaters some months ago (see Artificial Lawyer story) along with several others of the original team who had been focused on financial services products, especially in relation to derivatives. Nakhoda continues to operate and is now headed by Linklaters’ Head of Innovation, Shilpa Bhandarkar.
Mudgil told Artificial Lawyer that he wanted to join a company that had a startup feel, but that also had the right infrastructure, was robust, and operated in the financial services (FS) sector where he was experienced.
No-code platform BRYTER already works in the FS sector, but with Mudgil at the helm they will be able to grow their client base, plus they will have someone leading the group that clients can see has worked at the highest levels already on complex FS-related products.
‘At Nakhoda we tried to bring all kinds of things to market, but you are limited by the circumstances [of being in a law firm] and there is a ceiling where it’s hard to scale,’ he explained.
He noted that he met Michael Grupp, CEO of BRYTER, by accident, and that discussions then developed from there.
The goal now is to scale up BRYTER’s use across the FS sector, but that does not mean just banks.
‘This could mean law firms as well, consultancies, fintech software companies, and other related areas,’ Mudgil said. ‘There are a lot of FS use cases [for no-code technology].’
He added that helping with the massive IBOR repapering project is one good example of where they can help with no-code workflows and automating aspects of the process.
‘We can help to weave all of those processes together, with output from the document data we can make decisions using logic gates, and also help auto generate documents,’ he explained.
In short, they can work at the intersection of legal and FS, bringing relatively easy to implement systems into a process to help a variety of FS players.
When asked whether other Nakhoda team members who have also left over the last 12 months would join him, Mudgil said that he would be making contact with his network, but that several of his former teammates had now found new roles already.
Grupp, the Founder and CEO of BRYTER, added that the FS unit will have a global reach, with the US as an important market.
The move comes a week after the news of its $16m Series A investment led by top enterprise software VC firms, Dawn Capital, and Accel, which has also been an investor in RPA leader UiPath. Meanwhile, Dawn Capital is also an investor in Eigen Technologies.
More broadly, Grupp told Artificial Lawyer that although one could see the company as ‘legal tech’ that ‘the line between legal, compliance, and risk, is blurry. There are overlapping use cases. At BRYTER we think about what is the problem we are trying to solve,’ and that may be seen as a legal, risk, a compliance matter, or purely a business issue.
The key was whether an organisation had a set of rules in place, and whether part of those rules that generated a process could be helped with a no code automation system.
Grupp concluded: ‘BRYTER is for people using rules on a pro level.’
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So, is this a big deal? Yes. Certainly. Coming soon after the major investment and a new strategic imperative to expand in the US market, this top level hire further cements BRTYER’s reputation as a serious market contender with a focus on growth that goes far beyond narrow law firm use cases and into the wider commercial world.
Undoubtedly the expansion of the team, new funding, and broad strategic plan will increase pressure on other well-known no-code/low-code platforms. But, that may not be a bad thing. It’s a huge market and no-code has a bright future.