Founders: Arshita Dewan, Riniki Das Barman, Karisa Mahroukh
Some of the best companies have been built by founders who dared to take a risk. Clausifai’s founders travelled more than 8,000 km to take a chance on an Australian university before building the company. Arshita and Karisa were friends early in childhood in Assam (Northeastern India). They’d been best friends since they were little, so it was hard when Karisa had to move across the world to Adelaide. Like all kids they assumed they'd see each other every year but soon seven years passed by in a blink. Arshita's life carried on until the opportunity came to study overseas in AI and machine learning at the University of Adelaide. The exact same university Karisa was studying at.
Riniki, the third co-founder, met Arshita in their computer science degree. Arshita had a hunch they were from the same part of India, and she was right: both of their families came from Assam. One might think it was an intentional push from the universe bringing these people together when they discovered they were actual distant relatives. The three naturally became close, forming their own group. Unlike their classmates who were excited for upcoming software engineering internships, this trio had an ambition to build something for themselves on a grand scale. They tried a few different ventures: nail salons, podcasts and an events business, but nothing really stuck. It wasn't until an early version of Clausifai revealed itself at a hackathon that the wheels really started turning. That hackathon prize bought them office space in ThinkLab Adelaide where they surrounded themselves with founders who all helped validate their problem space. Dealing with contracts is messy, painful and can be expensive for startups. From talking to founders every day they found out just how easy it was for contracts to quickly become a legal nightmare without proper infrastructure in place. Founders were routinely pasting contracts into general AI tools without due diligence and sending these across to enterprise clients. A Y Combinator founder told them he spent weeks hunting for an IP document across emails and found out the recipient had never signed it, years after it was sent. He had to pay a lawyer, with a two-to-three-week turnaround, before flying out for Y Combinator. Clausifai’s earliest version alone brought in 168 users within a month with paying users following quickly.
When Clausifai came to Startmate, they accelerated their traction and broadened their markets. They ran 60 discovery conversations per week across agencies, recruitment, real estate, and other markets. They used those learnings to expand their target market to modern businesses with client-facing contracts and service agreements. Larger incumbents cater to only one element in the process, present static templates only or store without dynamic context. Clausifai’s differentiator is a dynamic contract infrastructure bolstered with AI. Clients get contracts signed in as little as two hours with the average being closer to one day. It integrates with all major tools including Granola so context from customer conversations turns into draft contracts. It's a context-aware, all-in-one company brain built for businesses.
We are a country that can attract top talent from around the world. Arshita, Karisa and Riniki are a young, all-female team with the ability to take on the largest players in the market. Karisa worked at the Supreme Court for two years and Arshita and Riniki built technical products throughout university leveraging machine learning and AI. They faced early challenges from sales prospects reducing their value to appearance and gender, encouraging them to start more female-focused businesses. But this team weathered the storms and more, building credibility in a space that runs on it. Clausifai is aiming for global expansion in the US, UAE and India, positioning themselves as the autonomous contract platform for modern businesses worldwide.
