CLIENT INTRODUCTION
Indiamart is India’s largest online B2B market place for business products and services. The channel focuses on providing a B2B platform to Small & Medium Enterprises (SMEs), Large Enterprises and Individuals.
- Founded in 1999, the company’s mission is ‘to make doing business easy’.
- Corporate Office in Noida, UP
- Approx. 60% market share of online B2B classified spaces in India.
- Approx 3000 employees across 41 offices
- 113 Million+ buyers
- 6.2 Million+ suppliers
- 69 Million+ products & services listed
- 58 Million+ monthly business enquiries delivered
- www.indiamart.com
Indiamart implemented Lawrbit's GRC Solutions for 6 group entities: Indiamart Intermesh Ltd. - a listed company, 4 wholly-owned subsidiaries and one associate company.
With listing, group intends to expands organically and inorganically.
Client Challenges
Indiamart decided to implement Regulatory Compliance Management Solution while preparing for IPO. They anticipated IPO will opens make corporate governance more complex and company has to further strengthen the structure both from Regulatory as well as Stakeholder’s perspective.
- Being a listed company, having aggressive expansion plans post listing, the company was expecting quantum jump in the applicable compliances and frequent changes in the applicable laws.
- Board of Directors reviews the Compliance report in each quarterly Board Meeting and demands a stronger and transparent system to monitor and control the adherence to the applicable compliances.
- The Board of Directors review the Compliances of not just Indiamart, but for entire group across all 41 locations spread across 14 states, wherein manual tracking was no longer an option.
- Single notice of non-compliance could damage the brand value; so process for proactive monitoring and timely corrective actions with multiple layers of defence was to be put in place.
- While the company has always been conscious towards compliance, technology interference and building multiple layers of defence, auto reminders / escalations would assist in eliminating risks.
- Bringing group wide cultural shift to make everyone aligned with governance, risk & compliance (GRC) policy framework and also sustaining such change.
- Consolidated view and timely updation of regulatory changes in the laws applicable to the business.
THE SOLUTION
Having experience and seasoned Legal team who have in their previous experience worked with most of the Compliance Technology providers in India; the challenges experienced in such implementations were known. After thorough evaluation of few service providers options; Indiamart chose to implement following solutions from Lawrbit
Global Compliance Management Solution (GCMS)
Legal Matter Management Solution (LMMS)
IMPLEMENTATION PROCESS
BUSINESS DISCOVERY SESSION
Business Understanding – Implementation team shared a detailed questionnaire with client covering company type, business operations, functions, products, services, locations etc. to help identify the applicable laws. Taken inputs from departments, functions and location SPOCs.
Finalization of list of applicable laws
Basis inputs from client, lawrbit implementation team shared list of acts applicable on the organization covering all the aspects of business, locations for which solution needed to be implemented.
COMPLIANCE CHECKLIST FINALIZATION
- Identification of applicable Compliances – Implementation team worked with legal research team to finalize the list of applicable compliance to the client.
- Compliance Checklist Finalization – Implementation team provided access to respective stakeholder and finalized the list of compliance after a thorough discussion and agreement with each stakeholder.
DEFINE AUTHORITY AND RESPONSIBILITY MATRIX
Client’s SPOCs shared responsibility, authority & escalation matrix for each compliance and corporate event activated in the GCMS. Performer >> Approver >> Group Owner
APPLICATION SETUP
Application hosted on AWS server and dedicated instance was created for the client. Basis information gathered implementation team configured the master data of users, locations, functions, responsibility matrix for the compliance finalized . The user activation done through a secured link provided and users were supported for their account activation by the support team.
APPLICATION GO LIVE
- Classroom Pilot: Gaps identified during audit process were resolved by the implementation team
- Refresher training: 1 refresher training was conducted at the corporate office for additional support to the users.
LIFETIME SUPPORT
Indiamart enjoys benefits of our lifetime support
- Regulatory updates and consequent changes in the applicable compliances are updated on Near Real Time basis in GCMS.
- Application is hosted on SaaS, so no involvement from client’s IT team for application support
- Technology updates, upgrades and new features are introduced on regular basis
THE IMPACT
- Board of Directors now have better control over the group level compliance adherence
- Everyone’s on same page with understanding and sensitivities of compliance obligations
- Resulted in better visibility, transparency and accountability in the system
- Huge saving of time in reporting and monitoring compliance at each level
- Helped reduce overall cost of compliance
- Implementation of LMMS across locations helped consolidate Legal Notices & Cases at single point
KEY LAWS APPLICABLE
- Companies Act, 2013
- Income Tax Act, 1961
- Goods & Services Tax Act, 2016 (GST)
- Prohibition of Advertisements for banned products under 40+ Acts
- SEBI Regulations
- Prohibition of Insider Trading, 2015
- Share based Employee Benefits, 2014
- Listing Obligations and Disclosure Requirements (LODR), 2015
- Capital & Disclosure Requirements, 2018 & More
- FEMA Master Directions
- Export of Goods & Services, 2000
- Import of Goods & Services, 2000
- Employees' Provident Fund, 1952
- Employees' State Insurance Act, 1948
- Payment of Gratuity Act, 1972
- Professional Tax Act, 1987 (with state / city specific rules)
- TRAI - Other Service Provides (OSP)
- MSME Act, 2006
- Indian Stamp Act, 1899
- Information Technology Act, 2000
- Copyright Act, 1957
- Code for Self-regulation in advertising
- Private Security Agencies Act, 2005
- Food and Safety Standards Act (FSSAI), 2006
- Fire Safety Act, 1986
- Shop & Establishment Act (State wise)
- Lifts & Escalators Act (State wise)
- Equal Remuneration Act, 1976 & state specific Rules
- Employee Compensation Act, 1923
- Contract Labour Act, 1970
- Payment of Wages Act, 1936
- Minimum Wages Act, 1948
- Payment of Bonus Act, 1965
- Child & Adolescent Labour Act, 1986
- Employment Exchanges Act, 1959
- Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013 (POSH)
- Maternity Benefit Act, 1961
- Many More…
Indiamart has offices in following states & cities
| STATES | CITIES |
|---|---|
| Delhi / NCR, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Punjab, Chandigarh, Karnataka, Rajasthan, Telangana, Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal, Kerala | Ahmedabad, Vadodara, Rajkot, Surat, Vapi, Jamnagar, Mumbai, Pune, Nashik, Nagpur , Chennai, Coimbatore, Madurai, Tirupur , Noida, Ghaziabad, Meerut, Kanpur, Lucknow, Agra , Gurgaon, Faridabad, Panipat, Ambala , Ludhiana, Amritsar, Jalandhar, Chandigarh , New Delhi , Bengaluru / Bangalore, Jaipur, Jodhpur, Hyderabad, Bhopal, Indore, Kolkata, Cochin, Dehradun, Guwahati, Raipur |
MANOJ BHARGAVA (Sr. Vice President - Legal & Secretarial), Indiamart
“Establishing a comprehensive compliance tool in a group spanned across 6 legal entities, having offices across the country is not easy without clear vision, consistent approach & agility to manoeuvre; Lawrbit could achieve this with our consistent support.
Having worked on many compliance & litigation solutions in past, what I liked is their easy user interface, seamless integration with Regulatory Intelligence & real time updates, analytical dashboards for the management.
The holistic approach of Lawrbit GCMS towards compliance; bucketing them in types, categories gives a comfort that we have control on compliance across the group. The team is proactive, helpful and has positive attitude towards our requests.”
THOMAS P. JOSHUA (Asst Vice President - Legal & Secretarial), Indiamart
We were in process of listing Indiamart when we on-boarded Lawrbit. The team worked hard to meet deadlines even when we had lesser bandwidth.
The details provided for each obligation, event based compliance, integrated Ticket Centre, Real time regulatory updates, Risk based approach and colour coding for each risks are their USPs.
We’ve provided many feedbacks to Lawrbit’s legal & tech teams; they’ve been open, responsive and included our asks as part of their upgrades. The team is approachable, customer centric and endeavours to implement our suggestions in adherence to TATs.