South Africa’s Imvelo Ventures Sets Undisclosed Amount for Funding

Imvelo Ventures a South African venture capital firm, founded by Capitec Bank and Empowerment Capital Investment Partners, has set an undisclosed amount of funding aside for Legal Lens and BriefCo, two legal tech companies held by Cycad Group.

Imvelo shared the benefits of introducing technology into the legal sector in South Africa and believes that aiding startups in the sector will advance the legal sector.

According to Yusha Davidson, one of the co-founders of Cycad Group, the South African legal industry has been one of the slowest in responding to the technological revolution and requires the attention of the group.

Legal Lens is a legal spend Management Company leveraging natural language processing and machine learning to regulate legal expenditure and mitigate excessive legal fees. The startup currently assists a number of banks, established companies, SMEs, and individuals, and has successfully implemented a number of bespoke billing policies aimed at regulating how law firms bill for their services.

BriefCo is South Africa’s first tech legal cost consultancy. The startup utilizes a team of experienced cost consultants, natural language processing, and its digital platform to automate the preparation of and opposition to bills of costs. BriefCo has developed its own secure online platform and allows digital provision of legal cost consultancy services, including the delivery and storage of all relevant documents.

According to Anton Baumann, the executive director at Empowerment Capital and Imvelo Ventures, a combination of long-term patient growth capital, mentorship, and access to market, is what Imvelo aims for by assisting the growth of their corporate partners locally and later beyond Africa and internationally. For this reason, the venture firm looks out for a combination of commercial potential and social impact among startups it invests in.