Journey of Sama’s Founders: Pranjal Sinha, Akshetha Maitri, Ashok, and Vikram Kumar

Rajshree Upadhyaya | Business Remedies | Pranjal Sinha, Akshetha Maitri, Ashok, and Vikram Kumar have established their identity by creating Sama, India’s leading online dispute resolution platform. Sama began as a small experiment among law students who were frustrated by judicial delays and were determined to find simpler ways to resolve everyday conflicts. The idea emerged around 2015, when Pranjal Sinha, Akshetha Maitri, Ashok, and Vikram Kumar started conducting mediation workshops and pilot projects that helped ordinary people understand the real cost of slow litigation.

These student-led projects gradually evolved into a focused mission to build a platform that could bring the human-centric practices of mediation and arbitration into a digital environment. To advance this mission, the founders formalized Sama as a company. From the beginning, the team upheld a single human-centered goal: to make justice accessible, affordable, and timely-without losing the empathy that sustains long-lasting agreements. With this objective, Sama developed a suite of services including online dispute resolution, online mediation, and online arbitration-tailored specifically for consumer complaints, family matters, property disputes, and workplace conflicts.

Early Success Through Pilot Projects and a Seed Round
The platform integrates guided conversation workflows, trained mediators, and enforceable settlement mechanisms, enabling users to progress from filing a complaint to reaching a resolution on-screen-without waiting years for court hearings. Early success came through pilot projects and a seed funding round, which gave the founders the opportunity to refine their product and test integrations with institutions that needed solutions for court backlogs. Investor confidence helped Sama move from a prototype to a production-ready platform capable of handling hundreds-and later thousands-of cases. Media attention highlighted how the company delivered faster resolution times and lower per-case costs compared to traditional litigation. This led to more partnerships with businesses and government agencies seeking practical dispute-resolution alternatives.

Sama’s appearance on Shark Tank India Season 3 brought the founders national recognition. They pitched their model and secured a deal of Rs. 1 crore for 1.5% equity from Namita Thapar, Aman Gupta, and Ritesh Agarwal. The investment complemented earlier funding and opened new business opportunities, helping Sama expand both its customer base and operations. Rather than changing the company’s mission, the Shark Tank support strengthened their ability to onboard more mediators, enhance product features, and reach more users who needed faster pathways to settlement.

A Meaningful Initiative for Those Waiting Years for Justice
Today, Sama operates as an active platform managing a large volume of cases and continues to sign pilot and paid contracts. The company positions its work as complementary to the judiciary, offering legally enforceable solutions that reduce costs and court pendency for disputing parties. The founders have kept the story grounded: a small team of legal technologists transforming an age-old civic problem into a service that saves time, money, and emotional strain for both citizens and organizations.

From campus workshops in 2015 to a funded and operational enterprise, Sama’s journey shows how legal technology-combined with empathetic legal understanding and disciplined product development-can evolve from thoughtful experimentation into a service of civic relevance. The company remains active and continues expanding its online dispute resolution services, building partnerships that deliver faster and fairer outcomes to people who would otherwise wait years for justice.

Written & Edited By:

Rajshree Upadhyaya