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2i Capital backed Indlaw Communications has been sold to Thomson Reuters for an undisclosed amount.

Thomson Reuters, the leading financial news and business information company, has acquired private equity backed Indlaw Communications Pvt. Ltd., a Delhi-based legal information company, for an undisclosed amount. Indlaw runs a legal, tax and regulatory information database website called www.Indlaw.com. It will now be a subsidiary of Thomson Reuters.

Indlaw, founded by lawyer Joseph Pookkatt in 2002, had received early stage investment from private equity firm 2i Capital, which has $200 million under management. The company provides access to information on various primary and secondary legal documents such as judgments, parliamentary and state enactments, notifications, circulars and rules, constitutional texts, parliamentary debates, to customers like law firms, solicitors, advocates, businesses and students.

“The amount of data that Indlaw has on a realtime basis is huge. They have historical data of case history and others dating back to British time, which is over 200 years old. They did this with approximately 18 people,” said Vivek Sekhar, Chairman & CEO, 2i Capital India.

With the recent global meltdown, financial information services companies have been suffering from loss of clients globally. The acquisition of Indlaw by Thomson Reuters is an example of how large information companies are looking at fast growing markets like India for expanding their footprint. Thomson is already present in financial data in Indian market.
 
Besides Indlaw, another leading legal database in India is Manupatra (www.manupatra.com). 
 

2i Exits

Apart from the exit from Indlaw, 2i capital has been slowly and steadily exiting its portfolio. It recently exited Titagarh Wagons via open market, while other exits include XL Telecom & Energy, Gayatri Projects, Idea Cellular, Man Infraconstruction, Southern Wind Farms, and Umang Realtech.
 
The company is in the process of making a trade sale exit of a geographical information services company in another month.