5 Billion records and counting: Inside India’s largest litigation data lake 

Court-kachehri ke chakkar mein mat pado. 

Everyone has heard this phrase at some point, or some variation of it. And with good reason. India’s courts are a byzantine maze whose gears turn ever so slowly. After all, there are more than 3 crore pending cases in Indian Courts, with many of them pending for more than 10 years. 

But where challenges exist, solutions arise naturally. And so it is with Cubictree, a legaltech company that has worked quietly and painstakingly to create a legal-tech firm that addresses the pain points of millions of Indians. We catch up with its founder and Ceo, Hitesh Jirawla in a freewheeling conversation. Excerpts below. 

You started Cubictree over coffee, after a friend couldn’t locate a case paper. That sounds almost too simple for a company sitting on nearly 5 billion legal records today. When did you realise the problem was not just inconvenience, but something that was genuinely costing people their homes, their savings, their peace of mind? 

Honestly, it’s a journey with many plans at first, but as we went along we continued to learn about new use cases and the benefits we could offer with the data we have. Additionally, since there isn’t a global benchmark for such services, we focused on trying to innovate ourselves, and we still do.  

You are correct; it began with a straightforward conversation that sparked the entire journey. The initial inquiry was why law firms continue to operate manually while we are automating various sectors. As we ventured into this field to revolutionize the automation of legal processes, we recognized that litigation in India can extend beyond 30 years, with an average duration of 10 years. There are numerous dates for hearings, and developments occur on each of these dates, necessitating meticulous tracking of actions. Every team involved, including lawyers and parties, must remain informed.  

This realization led us to aggregate data, ensuring that all stakeholders in litigation are kept updated with information that facilitates timely and effective preparation for achieving quicker results. As we progressed, we discovered that the volume of information is vast, with over 100,000 sources, making manual tracking unfeasible.  

Consequently, we developed the world’s largest litigation data lake. As we began to connect the dots, we understood that this resource could be extremely beneficial for banks in assessing litigation risks associated with potential borrowers, allowing them to evaluate applicants at the initial stage. We achieved significant success with this approach and subsequently created multiple use cases for due diligence, mergers and acquisitions, rental agreements, property transactions, and more.  

Of the roughly one crore loans sanctioned in India every year, somewhere between 60 and 80 percent are backed by property as collateral. That’s an enormous number of transactions resting on information that’s fragmented, multilingual, and often buried in tier-2 newspaper notices. How exposed is the average Indian lender, and how aware are they of that exposure?  

In India about 1 crore loan applications are made every year for asset back loan and approximately 45 lakh loans are disbursed every year. Every Lender in India is exposed to this risk, as there is NO Title GUARANTEE on a property and only data sources available for the property title check are SRO records which are States subject and multilingual and then a lawyer opinion is required for the same, we worked with our customers to understand what we could do to make sure they have a complete risk profiling of a property and based on industry feedback we developed a Property Intelligence Infrastructure.  

It’s a combination of Proprietary Newspaper Data (Phygital 30Million Unique addresses with 11+ years history, adding 4 Lakh on monthly basis Pan-India) with our Litigation Data with exact property Litigation + Online SRO and CERSAI with Customer build AI to analyse the data and provide a 360 degree risk analysis in 30 mins and then QC for final delivery, so that BFSI can lend with confidence. We have case studies where we have identified risk on loans application from INR 25L going up to INR 200 Crores. 
We are the only company providing the Property Intelligence Report in India combined with Proprietary data. 

Most of the conversation around property risk centres on buyers. But you mentioned this applies equally to people renting. What are the hidden dangers a tenant faces when they sign a lease on a property with an undisclosed litigation history, and is that risk on anyone’s radar in India right now? 
 
Simply put, non-compliant or disputed property cannot be rented. 

In such instances, individuals may lease the property that is either non-complaint or under dispute. Despite having a formal agreement, paying a deposit, and remitting rent for several months, they can suddenly be asked to vacate the premises. Additionally, a legal file may be initiated against the tenant, requiring them to pay the total rental amount for the entire duration specified in the agreement. 

The individual renting the property not only incurs financial losses but also becomes embroiled in legal disputes, necessitating the hiring of a lawyer to navigate the case, which adds to their expenses. Furthermore, the individual must seek alternative accommodation, presenting a significant challenge. These disputes, often minor in nature, tend to go unnoticed by major media outlets; however, they represent a substantial and escalating issue. It is imperative that every rental property undergoes thorough checks on various parameters to ensure it is a legitimate and clean property available for rent. 

India speaks in twenty-plus languages, and so do its courts. A property dispute in Rajasthan, a mortgage default in Tamil Nadu, a title encumbrance registered in a Marathi-language newspaper; how do you build a system that can hold all of that together, and what happens when it can’t? 

For over a decade, we have been collecting data from both physical and digital newspapers. As of today, physical newspapers still account for 60% of the market, which is delivered to our office. From there, we proceed with the digitization process. Back then when we started with the digitisation process we realised there are no good models available to translate multilingual indic languages into English or search Indian addresses from large text in India, so we set up our own team and we have built the technology in house with proprietary models which are trained to not only translate multilingual indic languages to English but also identify Indian addresses with 95% + accuracy from any given large text. Now that we have the refined data, we use AI open-source models as well as paid models to build intelligence on top of this data.  

There’s a phrase you’d probably recognise most aam junta having: stay away from the police station and the courts. That instinct to avoid the legal system runs deep in India. But your business is premised on the idea that ordinary people should be actively engaging with legal data before they make the biggest financial decisions of their lives. How do you change a mindset such as that, and the fear around it? 

The straightforward explanation for why parents are advised to avoid police stations and courts, or to seek the legal system for justice, is simply that it operates like a black box and is unpredictable. However, at Cubictree, we are transforming this situation.  

We have compiled data that spans 50 years of history, encompassing every action taken on a specific case throughout its duration. This allows us to forecast the expected duration for case closure and identify the most effective lawyers, based on real data, who are available in a particular city to resolve specific disputes. It is a journey of building intelligence for the Enterprises and very soon we will be launching verticals as well where the consumers or ordinary people like you and me can access the platform which now provides a clear prediction on closure of your dispute. 

Imagine the power of this kind of information in the hands of an average Indian. We are talking about making informed decisions on the legal assistance by clearly outlining the process, approximate costs, timelines and the best lawyers that you and me can hire with real data of their performance of similar disputes being handled in courts and winning from our side.