Legaltech startup Jhana raises $1.6 million in a seed round

Bengaluru-based legaltech startup Jhana has raised $1.6 million in a seed funding round led by Freshworks founder Girish Mathrubootham and Eka Software founder Manav Garg through their venture capital firm, Together Fund. 

Other notable investors include Shyamal Anadkat, an angel investor and member of the Applied AI team at OpenAI; Scott Davis, a former Vice President of the cloud company VMWare; Harshil Mathur and Shashank Kumar, the founders of Razorpay; CRED CEO Kunal Shah; and others.

What does Jhana do?

Founded at Harvard University in 2021 by classmates Em McGlone, Hemanth Bharatha Chakravarthy, and Benjamin Hoffner-Brodsky, Jhana aims to revolutionize the legal industry by offering AI-driven paralegal solutions. The startup's technology is designed to assist lawyers, law firms, and in-house legal teams in streamlining tasks such as legal research and document review. 

Its flagship product, an AI paralegal, leverages natural language processing to produce legal outputs like propositions, citations, memos, and advisories. Jhana’s proprietary database consists of over 15 million case law records, statutes, and academic sources, allowing its AI to provide accurate and comprehensive legal research assistance.

Purpose of fundraising

With this new infusion of capital, Jhana plans to expand its proprietary legal datasets and AI models. In addition, the funds will be used to hire top-tier researchers in the fields of law and artificial intelligence, helping the startup scale its op

Bengaluru-based legaltech startup Jhana has raised $1.6 million in a seed funding round led by Freshworks founder Girish Mathrubootham and Eka Software founder Manav Garg through their venture capital firm, Together Fund. 

Other notable investors include Shyamal Anadkat, an angel investor and member of the Applied AI team at OpenAI; Scott Davis, a former Vice President of the cloud company VMWare; Harshil Mathur and Shashank Kumar, the founders of Razorpay; CRED CEO Kunal Shah; and others.

What does Jhana do?

Founded at Harvard University in 2021 by classmates Em McGlone, Hemanth Bharatha Chakravarthy, and Benjamin Hoffner-Brodsky, Jhana aims to revolutionize the legal industry by offering AI-driven paralegal solutions. The startup's technology is designed to assist lawyers, law firms, and in-house legal teams in streamlining tasks such as legal research and document review. 

Its flagship product, an AI paralegal, leverages natural language processing to produce legal outputs like propositions, citations, memos, and advisories. Jhana’s proprietary database consists of over 15 million case law records, statutes, and academic sources, allowing its AI to provide accurate and comprehensive legal research assistance.

Purpose of fundraising

With this new infusion of capital, Jhana plans to expand its proprietary legal datasets and AI models. In addition, the funds will be used to hire top-tier researchers in the fields of law and artificial intelligence, helping the startup scale its operations and enhance its product offerings.

The startup, which has already been beta-testing its AI solutions with over 800 users, aims to make legal processes faster, more efficient, and with fewer errors through its advanced AI models.

“Lawyers are some of the smartest and most competent people, but lose significant portions of their time doing mundane tasks like needle-in-a-haystack retrieval and patterned negotiation,” said Hemanth Bharatha Chakravarthy.

“So, the intention of our experiments with embedding AI in legal systems is to see how legal work can become its most creative, satisfying, and realised self; to see how assistants can make the law more intelligible for both the lawyer and client.”

Investor comments

“At Together Fund, we are excited to support innovative companies that leverage AI to address key challenges in the legal landscape. Jhana's AI-driven paralegal solution has the potential to transform how legal professionals operate, enhancing efficiency and accessibility within the domestic market. We look forward to partnering with the team as they continue to redefine the future of legal support,” Manav Garg, the Founder of Eka Software and SaaSBhoomi and a Managing Partner at Together Fund said.