US company Onit acquires AXDRAFT, a Ukrainian legal tech startup
AXDRAFT, a Ukrainian legal technology startup, has been acquired by Onit, an international provider of Enterprise Legal Management solutions. Yuri Zaremba, co-founder and CEO of AXDRAFT, reported the news to AIN.UA.
After the acquisition, he will remain at the startup as General Manager. AXDRAFT will continue to operate under the old brand name in the Ukrainian office. The team of 14 people will remain the same.
The amount of the deal was not disclosed, but according to Zaremba, it is a multimillion-dollar transaction. By the way, the startup was valued at $10 million in 2019.
About AXDRAFT
AXDRAFT is a SaaS legal document automation platform that covers the entire lifecycle of contracts, from the creation of drafts to editing, approving, and signing.
AXDRAFT helps lawyers and business teams minimize routine legal processes and speed up paperwork by 80 percent.
It took three years from inception to the sale of AXDRAFT.
“AXDRAFT’s development dynamics are the same as those of the most successful startups in Silicon Valley. In October 2017, Oleg and I started AXDRAFT. In December 2018, we got into Y Combinator, the best startup accelerator in the world. In April 2019, we raised $1.2 million in funding from leading investors in the Valley, and now, in December 2020, we completed the sale of AXDRAFT to Onit. We believe this is a big breakthrough not only for AXDRAFT but for the entire startup industry in Ukraine,” said Zaremba.
About Onit
The company Onit automates workflows for both legal and business teams. The company now has offices in the US, the UK, and New Zealand. Currently, it employs more than 300 people.
“AXDRAFT has created breakthrough technologies in the field of paperwork automation that will allow us to offer lightning-speed, error-free, and multilingual contract drafting. AXDRAFT will be an important part of Onit’s aggressive growth strategy,” commented Eric M. Elfman, CEO and co-founder of Onit.
According to Oleg Zaremba, co-founder and CTO of AXDRAFT, Onit was attracted by a company’s unique document automation algorithm, which allows automating any document drafting in multiple languages and speed up the processing tenfold.
“We want to change the attitude toward Ukrainian legal and IT services worldwide. Despite significant progress, Ukrainian teams are still associated with a Post-Soviet mentality and outsourcing services. We want to raise the level of trust and change this attitude toward the Ukrainian IT industry so that when the leading investors hear about Ukrainian startups, they first of all think about high-quality products developed here,” comments Oleg.