Four years ago, Laxman, the primary breadwinner of his family, died in an accident, leaving his wife Laxmi, a peon in a school with three children to support, to knock the doors of the Motor Accident Claims Tribunal. But after all these years of fighting for her dues, the 48-year-old woman was finally paid ₹8 lakh, not by a court’s judgement, but on account of a startup’s intervention.
Presolv360, established in April 2018, provides solutions to disputes outside of court. The endeavour has been recognised as a platform for online and offline dispute prevention protection and resolution by the Ministry of Law and Justice. Aman Sanghavi (26), its co-founder, says the idea was born out of personal experience. “I have seen my father entangled in court cases for 25 years. He has lost his health, money and time in an attempt to get some result. Looking at his state, I realised that we need to create an environment that encourages conflicts to be resolved outside of court.” Growing up, Mr. Sanghavi remembered Laxmi as someone who cleaned his classroom at St Xavier’s Boys’ Academy, Mumbai. He knew he had to take up Laxmi’s case pro bono. Within 50 days of his taking over all the paperwork, he ensured Laxmi was awarded the entire sum by the insurance company without him going anywhere near a court of law.
Mr. Sanghavi, along with two of his colleagues, Namita Shah and Bhaven Shah (both law graduates and chartered accountants), wanted to use their expertise to help people avoid litigation. Mr. Shah was also inspired to come up with this platform because he had seen his father, a textile businessman, endure a lot of agony in courts to settle disputes. Few months before Presolv360 came into existence, Mr. Shah was handling a case on behalf of his father at the Supreme Court. It was then that a judge (now retired) mentioned, “Son, your father started this case and your son will conclude it.”
The trio went about conducting a survey across all the courts in the city, which revealed that given a choice that is affordable, accessible and effective, people would not approach courts as the first resort for resolution of disputes. In fact, litigation is almost always initiated by a “legal notice”. Mr. Sanghavi says, “Receiving a legal notice hurts the ego, which leads to a legal battle.”
At Presolv360, they don’t send a notice but an invite with the subject line: ‘Invitation to participate for resolution through PresolvDirect’. As one of the many services they offer, the resolution option can be used concurrently with litigation by paying a registration fee of ₹750.
They offer three services in all each service has different fees. In PresolvDirect, the registration fee is ₹750 + taxes and then per session average fee is ₹5,000. PresolvReview fee ranges from ₹800 to ₹9,500.
The company has a panel of 14 experts, including psychologists, lawyers, industry experts and people from the corporate world who facilitate techniques like early neutral evaluation (making clients understand their stand in court, and how much time it will take) negotiation and mediation. They also offer ‘PresolvSecure’ which helps people prevent litigation and all the hassles that come along with it.
Another highlight of their offering is to look for the devil in the details of legal documents such as agreements and contracts to avoid disputes. They also provide their services pro bono to people whose income is less than ₹1 lakh per annum.
