ContractPodAi Keeps Expanding, Now With Oz Launch

As a small number of legal tech companies close offices, or even shut down entirely, others are still expanding. Take ContractPodAi for example, which is moving into the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region with an office launch in Australia. The new base will be a ‘stepping stone’ for further growth in that part of the world, the company said.

The NLP-powered contract lifecycle management (CLM) solution will set up shop in Sydney. This, the company noted, is ‘building on its strong operational presence in India’. They added that among major CLM players few have an office in Australia.

The move follows the recent appointment of Jerry Levine as Chief Evangelist and General Counsel (Americas). He had previously been global General Counsel and Corporate Secretary at Amelia.

As for expansion into the APAC region, Darran Wilson, has been hired to lead the charge and will be Country Manager in Australia. Wilson was most recently General Manager of Sales at InfoTrack, a legal workflow solutions company. He also did stints at Thomson Reuters, and Smokeball, the practice management platform.

ContractPodAi already has several APAC clients, and works with well-known Singapore-based firm Rajah & Tann, for example.

We see Australia, and the entire APAC region as an exciting market. With this physical presence in the region, we can more directly support our existing customers there, while also using this as a stepping stone to further expand into APAC,’ said Sarvarth Misra, CEO and co-founder of ContractPodAi.

‘I am pleased to join the ContractPodAi team as Country Manager. I will be working closely with businesses to truly address their contract management challenges,’ Wilson commented.

Is this a big deal? Clearly for ContractPodAi it’s an important expansionary step that underlines its ambitions to be a fully global operation. But, more broadly it’s a signal that amid the news about some legal tech companies cutting back on costs, or in some more extreme cases going bust, other companies are doing well and seeking out additional growth through confident and market-pioneering steps.

Of course, ContractPodAi received $55m in funding back in 2019, and that cash is no doubt still helping to power things forward. That said, large corporates are looking at how to get control of their contracts and the data within them like never before. I.e. there’s a simple reason why this kind of company is doing well – clear client demand.

[ Main photo: a completely gratuitous photo of a koala, because, well…who doesn’t want to see cute koalas on a cold January morning like this? ]