ODR: Shifting disputes to resolution

Our current means of dispute resolution, most notably the courts, are under severe stress. While efforts towards making courts more efficient are underway, there is also a need to reimagine the future of dispute resolution in India. Agami launched the Online Dispute Resolution (ODR)* initiative in December 2018 to nurture the ODR ecosystem by accelerating ODR startups, creating demand amongst business, society and government, and unlocking resources of all types. 

* Online Dispute Resolution is using technology and trusted mechanisms of alternative dispute resolution to disputes at scale.

Online Dispute Resolution (ODR) 1
Online Dispute Resolution (ODR) 2

Entrepreneurs, experts and enthusiasts of ODR came together to form “Autonomy”: a group to accelerate the ODR movement in India.

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Recent Activities

Coming Soon: ODR Handbook

Agami in association with NITI Aayog and Omidyar Network India, and ably supported by Ashoka Innovators for the Public, ICICI Bank, Trilegal, Dalberg, Dvara Research, and NIPFP are launching the ODR Handbook – an information guide to accelerate the adoption of ODR by businesses. For updates, click here

Unlocking ODR to enhance EoDB

On August 8, 2020 Agami in association with NITI Aayog and Omidyar Network India along with CII brought together leading legal professionals and industrialists to discuss ODR to enhance business efficiency in India.

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Catalyzing ODR in India

On June 6, 2020, Agami in association with NITI Aayog and Omidyar Network India brought together senior judges of the Judiciary, Government, and business in a closed door meeting to identify pathways for advancing ODR in India.See the five key insights here.

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ODR Week

Agami along with Autonomy – a group of entrepreneurs, experts, and enthusiasts of ODR came together for the largest weeklong online ODR meetup yet from April 13-17, 2020. The themes ranged from showcasing ODR solutions to identifying use cases for ODR to discussing building capacity for ODR in India

Watch the ODR Week on Youtube

Catch the history of Agami’s ODR initiative in India

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Recent Posts about ODR

60 teams from India and abroad participated in the Challenge. The process enabled participants to collaborate and create coalitions to build solutions. Extensive testing of the solutions proposed and __ rounds of interviews over ___ months followed, leading to the selection of __ teams into the finals. Agami [and our] partners immersed ourselves intimately into understanding and enabling the teams and their innovations.

The community heard insights from e-commerce leaders, grassroot networks, global pioneers, and start-ups to map the emerging future of ODR, develop a shared vision, strengthen relationships, and create clear areas of collaboration.


This meeting was a call to action, with attendees recognising that it is vital that the business sector recognize the potential of ODR, and take the steps needed to incorporate and institutionalize ODR mechanisms.

Some key insights emerged:

#1 Innovation in private dispute resolution is finally a thing

#2 Data will be more important than ever and will move between private and public systems

#3 We need standards but not over-regulation

#4 More and more ODR innovation will come from inside industry and civil society organizations

#5 Incentives will have to ensure first recourse to ODR


Notable attendees include:

Justice DY Chandrachud, Judge, Supreme Court of India

Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul, Judge, Supreme Court of India

Justice Indu Malhotra, Judge, Supreme Court of India

Anoop Kumar Mendiratta, Law Secretary, Government of India

Justice A K Sikri, Retired Judge, Supreme Court of India

Amitabh Kant, CEO, NITI Aayog

Nandan Nilekani, Co-founder and Non-Executive Chairperson, Infosys

Colin Rule, widely considered the father of ODR, President & CEO, Mediate.com

Shilpa Kumar, Investment Partner, Omidyar Network India

Pramod Rao, Group General Counsel, ICICI Bank

Rohini Nilekani, Founder-Chairperson, Arghyam

Rajneesh Jaswal, General Counsel, NestAway

The week brought together entrepreneurs, businesses, catalysts, and overall ODR enthusiasts to activate more interest in the space. With 1050 registrations, the participants were diverse ranging from lawyers, to professionals in e-commerce, infrastructure, financial institutions, to law students exploring ODR opportunities. Each session had around 200 participants tune in live, and over 2500 people have watched the sessions later on youtube. This week highlighted the massive catalytic opportunities that exist for ODR, particularly for financial disputes and payments. With the views on youtube for each session steadily growing, the community is excited to take ODR to scale.

The Jury

The three incredible finalists met with the jury at the Trilegal Offices in Mumbai, where the Jury took the hard call about who they would consider best suited to win the Challenge.

The Jury consisted of:

  1. Justice Srikrishna, former Judge of the Supreme Court of India
  2. Sonali Ojha, Ashoka Fellow and the Founder-Director of Dreamcatchers
  3. Vineet Rai, CEO of Aavishkaar Capital 
  4. Amit Sharma, Co-founder and CEO of ShopX 
  5. Sanjay Purohit, Chief Curator of Societal Platform
  6. Vivek Trilokinath, angel investor and startup advisor 

Public meetups

We organised three public meetups, as learning spaces in Bangalore, New Delhi and Mumbai to share the E-ADR Challenge model – putting together experts in platform thinking and technologists in the same room as those engaging with dispute resolution.

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