ODR Catalyst Challenge

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.