India’s MeetUrPro launches a legal and financial clinic for startups

Chennai-based MeetUrPro, a managed online marketplace for professional, tax and legal services, has created a package for startups called Startup Clinic to help them get all their regulatory compliance processes right, including legal, tax, and company incorporation.

The package includes services like the receipt of the certificate of incorporation and Permanent Account Number (PAN) allotment letter, allotment of Tax Deduction Account Number (TAN) and Director Identification Number (DIN), liaison for opening bank accounts, consultancy on Value-added Tax (VAT) and Service Tax registration, RBI compliance for inbound investments, and Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA) compliance for inbound investments.

Startups would generally hire chartered accountants and lawyers for getting their affairs in order. However, startups function differently from other businesses and CAs and lawyers who are not used to working with startups are not aware of these differences and can do more harm than help. Moreover, young entrepreneurs, unaware of the nuances of this domain, usually end up paying a lot more to these CAs and lawyers. MeetUrPro has the experience of dealing with a number of startups and their issues, and has therefore come up with Startup Clinic.

“My past experience in dealing with early-stage startups instigated me to come up with Startup Clinic. We learned that most of them are not aware of even the basic regulatory and tax requirements. In some cases, we noticed that the cost of delays in regulatory processes far exceeded their initial revenues. These factors made us believe that we must create an awareness program which would educate the startups about their regulatory obligations and the methods to comply with the same,” Divakar Vijayasarthy, co-founder of MeetUrPro, tells Tech in Asia.

Talking about Startup Clinic’s revenue model, Vijayasarthy states that the pre-consultation and health checks are done completely free of charge with no strings attached. MeetUrPro charges a markup fee when customers purchase services from a partner provider.

The company recently launched a face-to-face clinic in Chennai where it offered one-on-one consultation for startups on tax, legal, and intellectual property rights (IPR) related processes. “It was a successful initiative with more than 20 startups signing up for the event. We want to expand this model across the major startup hubs in India this year.  We also propose to increase our services, which would be evolved as we interact more with various startups,” adds Vijayasarthy.

MeetUrPro was founded in July 2014 by Divakar Vijayasarthy and Rajesh Inbasekaran. Since its inception, the company has witnessed steady revenue growth with nearly a 100 percent jump in the past one month. It expects to reach a run rate of US$1 million by March 2016.

Rocket Lawyer is a major player operating in this space. Based in San Francisco, California, it’s an online legal service company that offers legal services like incorporation, estate plans, legal health diagnostics to small and medium-sized companies. Clerky is another player, also based in California. In India, Startup Clinic competes with eLagaan and NovoJuris.