This startup is building legal infra for India’s broken traffic system

This article is a part of Startup Spotlight, a series that features young, up-and-coming startups.

Image credit: Timmy Loen

Himanshu Gupta spent nearly a decade building legal products across India and Southeast Asia. He first launched a lawyer marketplace but soon saw a flaw in the model. Users found lawyers, but their problems often went unresolved. 

The true turning point came during India’s Covid-19 lockdown, when Lawyered began helping stranded truck drivers, revealing a critical need for on-the-ground legal resolution.

😟 Problem

India’s roads have 350 million vehicles, but the legal system for traffic violations is overwhelmed. Over 240 million challans (individual traffic fines), are pending. The total liability exceeds 40,000 crore rupees (US$4.3 billion).

While digital enforcement with AI cameras has scaled, the resolution process remains manual and jurisdiction-specific. This creates uncertainty for drivers and significant compliance risk for logistics businesses.

💡 Solution

Lawyered has built what it calls a legal resolution infrastructure for India’s mobility sector. It operates through two main products, which are: 

• LOTS247: Provides 24/7 roadside legal assistance. An in-house team resolves 90% of incidents on the first call, with a network of lawyers available for on-site support within two hours.
• ChallanPay: A digital platform for resolving court-adjudicated traffic fines. It handles the entire legal process without requiring users to visit a courthouse.

Photo credit: Lawyered

📊 Market size

The country currently has a backlog of 180 million court-adjudicated traffic fines. At an average resolution fee of 2,000 rupees (US$21.4), this represents a pre-existing market of 36,000 crore rupees (US$3.9 billion)

An additional 8 million traffic fines are issued monthly, adding to this total. The government has a structural incentive to support resolution infrastructure to recover these unpaid penalties.

🤝 Team

• Himanshu Gupta. CEO and founder. Former associate director at LexisNexis.
• Syed Asif Iqbal. Chief product and strategy officer. A lawyer and co-founded advok8.in.
• Maninder Singh Bawa. CTO. Former director of engineering at Delivery Hero. Former software consultant at McKinsey.

🚀 Traction

• Onboarded 1.7 million vehicles, growing by 100,000 per week.
• Saved customers over 70 crore rupees (US$7.5 million) in potential losses.
• Resolved over 250,000 roadside incidents and 200,000 traffic fines.
• Secured partnerships with Gati Kwe, Blackbuck, Cars24, Park+, and industry bodies Aitwa and Fada.

🏆 Competition

💰 Financials

🚩 Risks